People with cancer are living in a different world than the rest of us. While we run through our hectic
lives we rarely have time for reflection. In the parallel universe of the cancer patient, however, time has a different meaning.
Their world is turned upside-down. Priorities shift and expectations change. Day-to-day life revolves around treatment schedules
rather than work and school schedules. The biggest shift in their lives is an internal one, because people with cancer are
facing their own mortality. They possess enormous amounts of wisdom about the big things – the things most of us don’t
take time to think about. Painting, journaling and writing poems is a way for people to access these big things, and the results can be quite powerful and moving. The following poem is inspired by my students and
the stories they have told me.
Illuminata
Day One
On the first
day of chemo
unexplained
gifts appear on the doormat –
lavender soap
wrapped in tissue paper,
a thick bar
of dark chocolate and a quartz
sparkled rock
to keep you earthbound.
Day Two
Everyone must
be busy today.
That’s
okay. You watch patterns of sun-
light slide
across your bedroom wall.
The dog sleeps
on top of your bed
and watches
you carefully.
Day Three
Dried leaves
in a pile woven together
by spider webs
on the brick steps
have no meaning. But they hold
your attention
for too long. Sleep now,
and wait for
something green to appear.
Day Four
Late last night,
your sister phoned.
You don’t
ask what took her so long,
because her
voice is the one that answers
in dreams. It is the flame
singing through
the longest night.
Day Five
Sunflowers
tied with yellow velvet ribbon
greet you when
you open the front door.
Peaches in
a brown bag, a box of pastries
tied with a
string, and bowl full of tomatoes.
The note is
from a neighbor you hardly know.
Day Six
New copies
of PEOPLE and VOGUE stacked
beneath a bottle
of bright pink nail polish
the sticky
note attached - “Something to do!”
“2 DVD’s
that will make you LAUGH –
“Pink
Panther” and “A Fish Called Wanda.”
Day Seven
After smoking
the joint that was hidden
in an envelope
labeled JUST IN CASE,
you look up
the word grace in the dictionary.
“Thank
you for the gifts,” you write,
“I feel
like a Saint has visited my doorstep.”
In 2001, my poems were featured in a collaborative exhibit at the National Science Foundation
and Duke University Museum of Art called A Celebration of Barrier Islands: Restless
Ribbons of Sand featuring 17 batiks on silk and 7 monotypes on paper created by Mary Edna Fraser, text by Orrin Pilkey
and my poems. “Barrier Island” is the poem that was used on the invitation.
Barrier Island
Where nothing
is certain, we awaken
to another
night of delicate rain
falling as
if it didn’t want to
disturb anyone. On and off
foghorns groan. The lighthouse beacon
circles the
island. For hours, melancholy
waves tear
whatever land we’re standing on.
Listen to the
sea - rain dripping
through fog,
suspended at the edge of earth
on a circle
of sand where we are always
moving slowly
toward land.
