Melanoma
        for E.G.

After the freezing, the incision, the five stitches,
you walk out of the sun where the flag iris, the gold sails of the daffodils
tremble in late May wind. Three lavender tulips, blowsy, overblown,
lean against a stone wall like absinthe drinkers at a Paris bar.
You point to a patch of gravel below us where a heroic brown ant—
farm tractor, armored warrior—lugs behind him
the corpse of a honeybee twenty times his own weight
& marvel at the microscopic power of the barely visible.
"It's no bigger than a pinprick;" you say. "They'll know
for sure in a week.
If it's what he thinks it is, they'll have to take a big chunk out of me."
Measuring the mortally beautiful Greek word on your tongue,
you stare down at the crater where Achilles drags Hector,
the terrible burden shouldered, into the lengthening blue shade of the iris.

Copyright © 2009 L. S. Asekoff All rights reserved
from The Gate of Horn
Triquarterly Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission