Sonnet

Tom bought that backpack sprayer, like, six years ago
at the orchard supply and hardware store,
and it had served him pretty well. He sprayed his property
and the church property and the vacant lot next to the church,
the ownership of which he had never known nor asked about
nor had it ever become an issue, but it was sure as Hell free of weeds.
The cancer was like a twisted towel down his neck now,
like a baseball at the corner of his jaw, like a hand,
a big man’s hand, under the skin across his cheek
and upper lip and nose and around his left eye. He thought
as he strapped on his sprayer how the cancer would not only
kill him and very soon, it had made him a monster to the kids
who had been his friends. But there would be no weeds this Spring.