I understand sadness

Years pass as solidly as stones on an ancient path.
I understand sadness, it is the sky we live under…
Cancer cells multiplying in the darkness
of bone marrow have no purpose. 
They neither single out the wicked,
nor allow a cure for someone,
because she is beautiful, intelligent or good.
Cancer is a storm raging furiously around us,
its lightning can strike anywhere, anytime.
Nature is our mother in whom we find shelter.
Hovering above the luxurious grass is the glow
of tipsy-gold buttercups. The baby-blue 
air is breathless, only moved
by the beat of the swallow’s wings.
I am thinking about the coming days,
not years anymore. Does gravity warp space and time,
moved by the beat of the swallows
as they hawk midges over the field?
I listen to the constant drone of the hover flies, 
the buzz of horseflies, the hum of the bees.
I breathe in that last summer’s beauty as if
it were my last. I take in the bumblebee’s view 
across a lake of moving wild flowers, 
the meadow brown butterflies  
swarming over the grass, chasing each other …
Eternity would not be long enough, if it was composed
of summer evenings like this…
The pain is resurging with the nausea. Tomorrow  
will be another course of chemo and I think of autumn
descending quickly, as quickly as cancer cells multiply.
The swallows will have gone, a chiffchaff 
might pass through, the last summer migrant.
The warm orange glow in the November afternoon,will I still see it?
I want to listen to the sigh of my feet in the frosted grass,  
the shiftless hunting of voles, shrews and mice in the hedges. 
I want to be out in the fading light under the stars, 
wrapping my coat closer and then fall asleep
under a spangled sky in the starry night of seeping cold.