a poem after diagnosis...

READING THE FILES OF THE SUMMER OF DEATH

Say it several ways: a cloud

small, in the distance, across the bruised hills

or the intimate smudge on this negative

fusing a scanned secret. White masses

blind us. Laboratory files

refuse grief. Say the stars are forming

at a centered galaxy. Say love has a shape

you’d know, beautiful & wounded.

Now the pain

is distant, let’s talk, say, of your gardens

the white valerian, the arch of ivy

Say there is a place the soul comes to

Say death takes our senses

takes your breath away, that beauty

the woman in her red dress. Say

it makes a certain sense, the lines

of white birches, the blasted lesions

like fireworks exploding

through the brain. They’re pretty.

They could be a row of daisies.

This could be the storm breaking

This could be the falling tower

Your hands tremble

Your nerves are naked

Poetry is the last resort.

I read this poem at a local college, upon request, a few years back. One of the other folks turning out to have been asked to read a poem (oddly, about my bookstore, though I hadn't met him previously) gave me a ride to the rehearsals...and turned out to be an off duty highway patrol officer. "yeah, in my job I have a lot of time driving, and when an idea hits I just pull over..."

The poem came from an inadvertent breach of confidentiality when I was sorting mail for a local health center and a report, complete with x ray, fell out of a package. As I picked it up I saw the name of one of my dearest local friends, a poet. And the diagnosis.

She is still living, and managing her condition okay, with the help of poetry and her dear husband.