sounds improbable
perhaps made up
even the radiologist
laughed (before):
“everybody thinks
they see a
brain
tumor
on their MRI”
maybe just
for sympathy
or attention, what better
way to make
people feel sorry
for you? really,
who talks about
it? If it was true,
you’d just be silent,
depressed, dying,
figuring out why you,
why YOU? so we’ll
silently nod our heads
in doubtful sympathy,
noting your normal
face, and we’ll keep
our doubts quiet
while
you
are
still
here
Her name was June, but she left in May,
before the sunflowers could bloom and ask
for more days. In the stone church, whispers
spoke of the claim: cancer, a brain tumor.
Stolen summer laid her cold, draped in flowers
taken in their bloom. They would die soon.
I kept my head bowed, listened for June,
waited for the preaching, sobbing, and hymns to end.
In the front of the church, in a purple dress
with a black bow in her hair, June’s daughter sat;
I knew her well. She looked straight ahead and made
no sound, and that is why I kept my head down.
And when the cars were gone, and I was alone
I wept, and I wept to the church and through June.
The last months of her life, when the brain tumor
grasped and haunted her head, June had changed.
And her daughter, so many days, so many different
colored bows, would tell stories of the crazy things
her mom would do and stay. And it wasn’t June.
It wasn’t your Mom. I cry because we have lost
part of summer, but I weep for her girl in the purple dress,
and the June she remembered as she sat on those steps.
brain tumor, craniotomy, another brain tumor, I am thankful to be alive
Lie down on the MRI table; they’ll lay a sheet over you
like you’ve already died. And when you begin to shake,
the sheet moves with you in a gentle dance of fear, as they block
your head in, snap the cage around your face. Don’t move,
they say, and you will your body to stop its shake. Your head
is still because they’ve trapped it. The table slides deeper
into the glowing tube, swallowing you up like medical prey, and all
you do is close your eyes, hold your breath, and listen
to the sounds of a machine predicting your future.
Because you are trapped, and scared, cold and alone,
you let your mind go, and it travels back to summer days on the farm,
riding horses, raising lambs, stacking hay bales in the sun,
but it follows with a breath grabbing squeeze, remembering days
of being forgotten, left alone, rejected. You are still shaking.
As the machine scans your brain for tumor growth, your head
scans your mind, for joy and love, for when you listened and grew,
created. But it always follows with the haunt of a face, someone
you hurt, or let go. And you are sorry.
The machine stops its banging for a moment. The mind rests.
And then it begins again. It says sunsets are numbered. Are you living
every one? All of the stories you were meant to engage in are not told.
You have a full heart and a broken brain, and you still have not
written down all of the words. You shake, lift off the table, hover in the air.
You’re looking down on the machine holding your body below. Music.
Floating. Voices. Go where you are needed. Love with all you are.
Be light. Believe. The machine goes still, and they pull you out.
The test is over. You already know the results.
Talking to the Clouds 