A POETIC CANCER

(Copyright © 2013 The Big C and Me)

I read a wonderful poem recently about cancer written by Maryland's poet laureate, Stanley Plumly, in the Los Angeles Times. I am struck by it's lyrical, imaginative and original nature, and inspired to write some poetry of mine own.

But not today. 

Instead, allow me introduce you to...

CANCER, BY STANLEY PLUMLY

Mine, I know, started at a distance

five hundred and twenty light-years away

and fell as stardust into my sleeping mouth,

yesterday, at birth, or that time when I was ten

lying on my back looking up at the cluster

called the Beehive or by its other name

in the constellation Cancer,

the Crab, able to move its nebulae projections

backward and forward, side to side,

in the tumor Hippocrates describes as carcinoma,

from karkinos, the analogue, in order to show

what being cancer looks like.

Star, therefore, to start,

like waking on the best day of your life

to feel this living and immortal thing inside you.

You were in love, you were a saint,

you were going to walk the sunlight blessing water,

you were almost word for word forever.

The crown, the throne, the thorn —

now to see the smoke shining in the mirror,

the long half dark of dark down the hallway inside it.

Now to see what wasn't seen before:

the old loved landscape fading from the window,

the druid soul within the dying tree,

the depth of blue coloring the cornflower,

the birthday-ribbon river of a road, 

and the young man who resembles you

opening a door in the half-built house

you helped your father build,

saying, in your voice, come forth.