Читать книгу Second Bloom - Anya Krugovoy Silver - Страница 13

On night shift in the ICU,

Rebecca tends to the sickest

patients, the ones subdued

on morphine and likely to die.

When she’s free, she drives

the backroads of California,

photographing almond trees.

Joy is a gift not given to all.

In pain, it’s evasive as a squirrel.

My friend, who can no longer lift

her head, her neck bowed down

with blistered tumors, tells me

I’m tired of fighting the beast.

So I clasp happiness while it exists.

Almond crowns bloom so briefly.

One day they’re white, the next, green.

Rebecca works in the fluorescent night.

In the afternoons, she photographs

the clapping, breathing trees.