Meanwhile

Where you are it is only autumn. 
But here, news of your decline arrives
on the warmest morning so far this year,
the air hung heavy, gold with forsythias. 
The cancer has spread so quickly there is
nothing to be done.  Meanwhile,
a hemisphere away, everything flowers at once —
the magnolia and plum trees, daffodils, crocuses,
hyacinths, phlox, the breathless rush of
cherry blossoms everywhere, obscene. 
Last winter your sister put off her pregnancy
with hopes of a bone marrow transplant.   
But it is already too late.
The dogwood tree is next, then the irises.   
I might say something about
the terrifying green of tulips, how each year
what lay buried or barren comes back with such abundance  
while we go on dying.        
But all that comes to me now is
the utterly useless thought that
you do not have to see this
and I am tired of spring.