Bad news Good news

Bad News Good News

I was at a camp in the country,

you were home in the city,

and bad news had come to you.

You texted me as I sat

with others around a campfire.

It had been a test you and I

hadn’t taken seriously,

hadn’t worried about.

You texted the bad news word

cancer. I read it in that circle

around the fire. There was

singing and laughter to my right and left

and there was that word on the screen.

I tried to text back but,

as often happened in that county,

my reply would not send, so I went to higher ground.

I stood on a hill above the river and sent you

the most beautiful words I could manage,

put them together, each following each. Under

Ursa Major, Polaris, Cassiopeia, a space station flashing,

I said what had been said

many times, important times, foolish times:

those words soft-bodied humans say when the news is bad.

The I love you we wrap around our

need and hurl at the cosmos: Take this, you heartless

nothing and everything, take this.

I chose words to fling into the dark toward you

while the gray-robed coyote came out of hiding

and the badger wandered the unlit hill

and the lark rested herself in tall grasses;

I sent the most necessary syllables

we have, after all this time the ones we want to hear:

I said Home, I said Love, I said Tomorrow.