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Like Persephone before me
The bloody seeds of a pomegranate
Or something akin
Were my very undoing
Slipping from my marrow
Tricking me into accepting them
As Hades tricked her
A long winter was the price
Decreed by the Fates
For taking in the seeds
My skin a barren, hairless desert
Earth and life frozen
In suspended animation
As Clotho spun my thread
The seeds will bring me back
Heeding Zeus' command
To undo Hades' deception
Planted in an empty field
They will find life
Defying Lachesis and Atropos
Bearing fruit from blood.
After two days of limited movement
Bed-toilet-chair-bed
Mentally pacing a generous cell
I am disconnected from all tubes
And step onto the elevator
Pressing 1 nonchalantly
As if I did this regularly
As if anything were regular
I blink reflexively at the sun
Shining against unfamiliar snow
Offended at the world
For spinning on without me
But feel little else
Not my tongue
Not the sting
Not the release
One more gate passed through
Another token collected
Gaining entrance to another room
Another test to be tested
Data clinging to me
But little else
Save the sensation that lasts
More gates await
The chemo floor is laid out
In patterns meant to assure
Blue white blue blue white
Squares of a checkerboard
In this box of a building
They put lines into me
Running down straight poles
From rectangular bags
Into how many squares
Have I entered with hope
Watching white coats
Ponder slides and charts
All this to battle a world
Of the round and oblong
Spherical planets and tumors
Evading angular control
The year breaks against the dilapidated jetty
Not so much new as alien and indecipherable
The saccharine certainties of Auld Lang Syne
A useless tool for navigating this strange planet
Obscured by snow, recession, and disease
In a matter of weeks we can look forward
To the soaring oratory of hope
The audacity found in looking skyward
Rather than to the ravaged landscape
Into which we expect to plant seeds
Is it anxiety or bravery that fixes our eyes
Steadily on the grim metrics of the now
The relentless chop of expectations dashed
Of assumptions held like a mogul's privileges
Of savings accounts and red blood cell counts
We exhale from the collective delusion
That sustained us through the false years
Of presumed safety and accomplishment
Nothing for it but to endure as an émigré
Learning the new language as we go.
One wonders how many journeys
Ostensibly of self-discovery and definition
Are intended as such by the searcher
Setting out to become more than he is
Odysseus went to Troy for glory and honor
Then merely wished to return home
To the comforts of Penelope and court
Never the tests of sirens and Scylla
What, ultimately, is discovered
Is no truth he can recognize
But the stranger living within
Unbidden and rarely welcome
The voyage of acceptance
Of what the razor can reveal
Of what the eyes can take in
Of what the heart can sustain.
The holiday comes early If it comes at all
Seen vaguely through a fog
Of Benedryl and ocean-borne snow
The rituals carried out
To keep the old normal in sight
As a new normal covers the world
Symptoms of the new present themselves
Falling snow, falling hair
White on black, stark and definite
The tide beaten back
By the engines of modernity
IV lines and snowblowers
The tree erected haphazardly
The gifts exchanged quickly
A holiday observed self-consciously
Moments of illusory clarity
As lights blink steadily
Vital signs of what we've become
At 4:15 p.m. on a cloudy Sunday
I sign the lengthy release forms
Skimming through the paragraphs
Finding the parental line
That says I trust them
These well-meaning, well-pierced
Twentysomethings with their abs
And their way about a rock wall
As reluctant holiday shoppers
Move by with aimless purpose
We sidle up to the plastic tower
With its contrived footholds
As real as anything pulsing
Through my veins and glands
As certain to find the mark
As we are to grab the rope
I help my youngest son
Into the harness and climbing shoes
All to release me from worry
To reassure him that nothing
No harm will come to him
That all risked is reward
That fathers and precious sons
And would-be heroes never fall
With 11-year-old nonchalance
And a side glance for reassurance
He pulls on the rope with his all
Planting feet on the first holds
Hearing the spotter urge him on
Straighten the leg...reach
Take a breath and think
Hear your own voice
Two stories up and two thirds there
He can go no further
The next hand grip beyond him
The left knee bent and locked
He asks if he can come down
What do you think?
Another breath, another pause
The left leg straightens
He slaps the top of the pulley
And begins his triumphant slide
A moment to carry us home
Out of the REI store
Down the Pike and 128
Oblivious to snowflakes
And the tailights of the aimless
We see our exit and take it
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