A New Poem

 My morning pages have been yielding some new poems.  I can't tell you how happy this makes me!  For several months, I couldn't write at all, my meager energies being devoted to coping with illness and treatment.  It is a gift to be able to go down to my studio and my beautiful altars and write.

So, here's a new one:

Undying Companion

 

 

Once upon a time,

            the word cancer

evoked such terror

            that merely reading

or saying it superstitiously

            tempted a raging

death curse into

            the body.

 

How things have changed,

            now that the interloper

invisibly insinuated its rapidly

            growing presence inside.

I can say the word now,

            without flinching.

Even after surgical removal,

            this disease has asserted

its place as my undying companion,

            and always will.

 

I will walk with cancer.

            I will dance with cancer,

I will sit with cancer, and

            I will sleep with cancer,

until I sleep

            for good.

 

It is not that the terror

            has dispersed.

It is only that uncertainty,

            which is true for all,

has traveled from a

            complacent distance

to take hold

            of my hand.