Sunday Sentence

In which I participate in David Abrams’s “Sunday Sentence” project, sharing the best sentence I’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”

Let my cancer be the slow-growing kind
so I will have all the time I need

to backstroke over the rocks and little fishes,
looking upwards through my bronze-tinted goggles
into the vaults and rafters of the oaks,
as the crows exchange their morning gossip

in the pale mutations of early light.

Source: Tony Hoagland (1953-2018), “Barton Springs” (published in Poetry [July/August 2007] and re-published in the inside cover of the Poetry‘s December 2018 issue).

3 thoughts on “Sunday Sentence

  1. Clive Collins says:

    Having lost a very old acquaintance to cancer just ten days ago, I very much appreciate these lines. Sadly, this prayer was not answered in his case. At least, it was not answered in the way he, and those of us who knew him, would have wanted.

    1. Erika Dreifus says:

      Oh, Clive. I am so sorry to hear about the loss of your friend.

  2. Sara Sutler-Cohen says:

    Gorgeous. Needed.

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