Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy
Hard work will set you free they would say to you.
God rests here, no motion needed--Lazarus rises
dizzily, to fall again, to rise, to fall. You
would sooner remain here, the former you abandoned
like cicada husks on trees. The incoming hour
encroaches like the dark, sways inside like motion sickness.
That alluring black sky you admire is the coat of God,
ruler of galaxies, promoter of all time.
That mercurial brine below laps at your feet--
recedes--comes back, goes, comes back.
Every finger moved, every lip touched, every thigh
worshipped is the mirage you think you see.
Like freckles on a face, like dark grain
on old film, like those spots that bleach
can't remove, we're cindered here, graffiti of the cosmos.
Once, your mother lay with you whispering
I'll do anything. You're my whole life.
And the proof--a photograph on the wall
of a young, hairless boy grasping a bucket of broken
shells and sand, and the blue canopy of earth
above him, big enough for all of us.
We, the archived of the living, the footnotes of the dead.