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The Optimist
The film showed stars of varying magnitude:
On the right, Libra, and on the left, Cancer,
Mapping the brain's horizons, vanishing points
Respectively of reason and desire.
The doctors liked her cheerful attitude,
Hope being all she had in her position.
She waited, calm. Touch burned out first, then
vision.
Emotion slipped. Last would be lungs and heart.
But, noting trends, they told her Taste was
next.
She asked then, could they pick out her last
dress?
She wasn't making light. It seemed to her
That cancer just rehearsed life's attitude
That one's desires must taper to a point,
Which has position, but no magnitude.
Joshua Mehigan
©
2000; originally printed in Poetry.
Reprinted by
permission of the author.
Background by
Savanna |