A Birthday Card
In her eighties now, and weak and ill
with emphysema, my aunt sends me
a birthday card-a tossing ocean
with clipper ship-and wishes me well
at forty-four. She’s included
a note-hard-bitten in ballpoint,
with a pen that sometimes skips whole words
but never turns back-to tell me
her end of the news: how the steroids
have softened her spine, how
every X ray shows more shattered bone.
Her hasty words skip in and out,
their little grooves washed clean of ink,
the message rising and falling
like short-wave radio, sending
this hurried S.O.S., with love.
