believing is seeing

Don’t say there are no miracles.

You saw as well as I did

that she spread her arms in the pool

like a heron’s wings, freestyle,

saw both legs spread and kick –

even the leg and arm numbed to

silence by that tumor — don’t tell me

you don’t believe. Watch

the way her muscle memory

brought her back to those

summer days at the Lake, marvel

the way her lizard brain remembered

the days she freestyled her way

around the Atlantic ocean. Years ago

I made her memorize in high school

the words to Whitman’s poem that

begins: “Why, who makes much

of a miracle? As to me I know of

nothing else but miracles…”

Now she is teaching me

again

to believe.