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Posts Tagged ‘healing’

Olfactory

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on February 26, 2020| Leave a Comment »

 

for Kyra

 

February ends with the fragrance of change—

not quite the fresh earthy scent of rain,

but no longer the white sterility of winter.

It’s the damp aroma of long dead grass

and the must of soil as it starts to unfreeze,

the bright tang of Gemini distilled from the sky

and the hint that someday there will be green.

 

This is the perfume I imagine you wearing today

as you move from the darkest hours of fear

into the chapter of healing. Yes, I smell it

as I hug you, the scent of making room for the world,

the scent of resilience, of beauty yet to come.

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Docetaxel

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 28, 2020| 2 Comments »

 

The yew can live to be over two thousand years old—

a sacred tree that grows large enough for forty people

 

to stand inside it. Today, its ancient power fits

in a clear plastic bag the size of two fists and it drips

 

through a clear plastic tube into the chest of my friend.

In three days, she will not want to move. She will not

 

want to eat. She will wonder if it’s all worth it.

It will last a week. So strange that a plant

 

that causes death when consumed will help

to save her life. Her hair has been gone for weeks.

 

But today, on her last day of chemo, I marvel

at how she is being infused with evergreen

 

in the hopes that she will transmogrify, carry

in her the mystery that grows in the bark of the tree.

 

When a yew branch touches the ground, it takes root.

Sprouts again. Let her body know this secret. Amen.

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As the Chemo Begins

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 12, 2019| 5 Comments »

 

 

 

Most of her hair was gone already,

but I guided the electric razor across her scalp,

brown tufts falling into my fingers.

 

We listened to music, drank wine,

toasted to vulnerability. She made jokes

about not needing to buy shampoo.

 

I sang along with the songs we had chosen—

choked on the lyrics to “Life is Wonderful,”

hummed when I couldn’t sing.

 

There are days when wonderful

is so far from what we might have chosen,

but wonderful it was, my hands

 

smoothing across the new naked landscape

of her head, delighting in the feel of the fuzz,

marveling at the gift of sharing loss and fear.

 

There are days when we lean into each other

and cry. And such a terrible wonderful it is,

letting the tears come. Weeping them together.

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There, In the Cupboards at the Cancer Center

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on November 21, 2019| 4 Comments »

 

 

 

Someone has crocheted a half dozen blankets—

one dark purple, another camo green, another

with stripes in every possible color.

There are half a dozen quilts with bright squares.

And someone has knit a dozen hats—

and a basket on the shelf overflows with handmade scarves.

 

My friend chooses a pink cotton pillow

that someone has sewn in the shape of a heart

and a long creamy scarf, impossibly soft.

She would rather be anywhere but here,

but look at that smile as she dons the scarf,

as if its stitches are keeping her from falling away.

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From Twenty-Seven Years Ago

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on September 18, 2019| Leave a Comment »

 

 

Things are gonna get brighter.

            —”Ooh Child,” The Five Stairsteps

 

 

In the photo, the girl is smiling.

I know all she is hiding.

 

If I could talk to her now,

I wouldn’t tell her much.

 

Wouldn’t warn her about

which boys will break her heart.

 

Wouldn’t tell her which jobs to avoid,

which years will last decades,

 

which friends will lie, which

day she should pay close attention.

 

But I would tell her that Nina Simone

was right when she covered The Five Stairsteps.

 

That things will be brighter.

The young me wouldn’t believe it, of course.

 

Because the healing hasn’t happened yet,

she has stopped believing it’s possible.

 

I might could slip that song into her

cassette mix. Even if she didn’t believe the lyrics,

 

she’d sing along. That’s the way she is.

And the words would land

 

in the branches of her heart

like the truest lyrics do. And build a nest there.

 

And when she lost her voice,

and when it got dark,

 

they would sing to her about the brightening.

Yeah, they would sing. They would sing.

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The Berry Bush

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 22, 2019| 2 Comments »

 

 

I knew that they were poisonous, the berries.

Still, I used them to make soup. They were

the most beautiful shades of yellow, green

and orange, and they popped when you squeezed them

and spilled their sticky juice, their tiny seeds.

I’d stir them into puddle water with handfuls

of ripped green grass, small stones, broken sticks.

Then I’d stir. Stir and chant into the old silver pot,

chant words I imagined had been sung long before.

It was a soup, I knew, that could heal.

A magical soup that could nourish the world

just in the making of it.

 

Years later I consider what I knew then—

how belief is the most important ingredient.

How all healing begins with a bit of poison.

 

 

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One Prayer for Healing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 2, 2019| Leave a Comment »

 

 

 

all day, the candle’s light

almost invisible, all day

I think of the girl

in the hospital, all day

to the light that is, adding more light

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Eventually

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 30, 2018| 6 Comments »

 

with thanks to JT

 

 

Start in the dirt,

said the photographer,

then elevate from there.

And though I was thinking

of poems, and though

he was speaking of images,

I immediately leapt to healing.

 

Just today I heard of a girl

who, on Christmas morning,

learned her stomach ache was cancer.

I called her mother

to console her, though

I was the one near tears.

 

Start in the dirt.

Ammons, my hero, once

looked to the dirt

in search of something

lowly, but all he could find

was magnificence. Within

a stanza, he launched

from ticks to galaxies.

 

Sometimes in the dirt

all I see is dirt.

 

I held back the tears until

after we hung up the phone,

then wept. I wanted to find

some shred of magnificence

in her story, but it is, perhaps,

too soon. No magnificence. I suppose

that’s the invitation to stay in the dirt,

stay there until I know, really know,

there is nothing lowly. Not

the lichen. Not the slug. Not the ant.

Not mutating cells.

 

Hafiz, my hero, once wrote

that everything, everything

is holy. Sometimes I want

to argue with him.

 

Start in the dirt. Yes.

Perhaps I will be here a while.

I have some practicing to do.

It may be some time

before I elevate.

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Wish

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 17, 2018| 6 Comments »

 

for my father

 

 

And when at last

the healing comes,

 

may it come like rain,

like rain after a long drought,

 

so soft that at first

you won’t be sure

 

it is raining,

but the fragrance

 

will overcome you,

green and wet,

 

and the world

will look dewy and

 

you’ll feel it in your lungs.

Yes, may the healing

 

arrive in a way that

astounds you,

 

as today when the rain turned

long and steady,

 

the kind that touches

and changes everything,

 

changes things so completely

you almost can’t remember

 

what it was like before,

yes, may healing come like this

 

so that everywhere you look,

all you see is promise.

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After All This Talk of Healing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 18, 2017| Leave a Comment »

 

 

 

the only thing

that matters

is the wound—

from a dark nest

comes gold

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