Joe the Cancer
was preparing a hot meal
to eat off my belly, as if I was
his table, or perhaps
a paper plate to be discarded
when his meal was done.

I pushed him off and 
thought I had done
enough for all time when
from the corner near the house
I heard him hooting out
his longing for my lungs,

and now I think about Joe the Cancer
more often than I think about
love or baseball, listening for his
hardly subtle song of yearning

and ignoring the now irrelevant
snap of a ball into a leather glove
that used to be, for me,
the perfected sound of triumph.