Yesterday marked three years since I was told I had cancer.
Thoughts and words borrowed from many references, and I thank you for them.
1
Other than
those two roads diverging in the yellow wood
one leading
one way, the other another
I don't believe in judgement day
with the heavenly armed forces
pulling you up or pushing you down.
Other than those roads in the yellow wood-
what paths are before us?
It's the
same woods and the same earth, the same
fiber
holding it all together- those tiny atoms pulling and pushing
for or against, that gravity
of an eon
echo burst that cast us out sideways
from
hydrogen into
whatever we
are.
It’s just
legroom we scuffle about in
existence is
so fragile:
temperature
and speed all just so,
any more or
less and we’d still be the unadorned element
H
Space is a
precarious place.
There are
stars burning who’s light won’t reach earth before I die.
The sun may
have just exploded, just now
and in 8
minutes and 20 seconds
everything
will change.
and yet
somehow,
stay exactly the
same
trivial, a
clump of atoms inside a Red Giant and
burning until there's nothing left but void.
It's all the
same woods.
And we won’t
know what’s beyond these trees
till we get
there.
2
Shuffles and shambles to survive,
while I
struggle to figure out
what that
means anymore. Is it
carrying my
bones to and from my bed? Is it
the space
between griefs? Is it
holding a
chive blossom in my hand?
Watching the
sparrows fight at the feeder?
Pouring
coffee?
Some days
it’s too much, it's too much of
just
crushing these goddamned osteo-lugnuts
rusted shut,
full of shit made
in a factory
somewhere
I lie half awake
Panic is my
predator and she has her way with me.
I am food
for Dangerous, Despondency, Despair
I have
nowhere to hide
No more good
face, no more God face
no more
comfort that this will actually turn out okay
as I watch
on like a horror film:
"Don’t go up
to the attic. DON'T GO UP TO—"
But she goes
anyway. See, the script is written this way
because the
bard say
“All the world’s
a stage,
And all the men
and women merely players;
They have their
exits and their entrances”
But it’s the
exits,
it’s the exits that
are final.
3
The basil's spicy scent still on my
hands
and the
marigold petals will begin
to light up
our summer salads.
I’m
peering like a four year old,
peeking fingers
through the fence,
waiting for
the beets to sprout, as they should
while I look
on
They whisper, "Nothing doing. I don't belong to you.
I am not your play thing. I am the great earth."
Majesty is
happening under ground, and
I have to
praise that.
I must give thanks unto
the worms,
the feeders in the dark
who quietly,
discreetly, till the soil and nourish
while nearby
seeds also quietly, discreetly, creep out of their casing
and push
with noiseless childbearing cries and
bear down
into deep roots, reach arms up in love to the sun
To the bees committing their altruistic ritual:
"Serve the world, serve the world."
I must give
praise to these little ones,
inside my doubt, inside despair
Inside the death and death and death of cells
Inside cancer, hunger, murder and space
the unending explosions of atoms:
Praise.
To the mustard,
the broccoli sprout,
the fruits
of the great earth.
