HIATUS - Coming to Terms

Nan Farady,

Hiatus, An opening, a gap. A break in continuity. The missing part.

"...and sure it's a queer day
that doesn't bring the night,
and the laugh is herald of the sigh."
Liam O'Flaherty,
The Black Mare

Coming to Terms

I

When it was clear that she would live
into surgery, when she'd been transfused
and stabilized and had flushed
into consciousness again,
Dr. Greenberg
[leaning over her
so that his nameplate was what she saw,
coming to--father of a student of hers--
how hopeful it made her feel,
just coming back from death's door,
putting two and two together
like that]
and she
talked of Leopold Bloom,
how the doctor's rounds on the ER
put them in mind of Bloom's tour.

[And Yes, she said, Yes to life.]

II

She read the books: that told her
her illness was her fault; that told her
it wasn't; that call illness metaphor
that call it fate; that relate it
to ratio or chromosomal eccentricity,
to breathing wrong or eating fat;
that provide cancer type with lifestyle
profile--cause of her illness; loving
a married man.
She thought of where she'd been
since who knows when, the lurking
dangers: Bay of Finland, Rocky Flats,
streets of india, at home
in her bath: fertilizer in the water
table. She thought of radon
in the basement, God knows what
on the strawberries.
She considered the germ in wheatgerm,
the fu in tofu.

III

She read the books: that advise anger,
that told her to fight. She tried on
anger; it didn't fit. She tried on
fighting, the warrior self, imagined
counterblitzing the cancer blitz.
She feared she'd blow herself up.
She needed an image she could trust:
her friends advised, Find it!
There might be a deadline here.
When she heard reed pipes
playing in her head, those melodies
haunting (despite their excessiveness
on NPR), freedom
fighters crept into her abdomen.
For days she imagined the war inside.
It ate her energy up.

IV

The cancer grew.
Finally she embraced it, caressed it
like a lover, teased it
like a friend:
enough's enough, enough
now scram.
She forgave it for returning.
She forgave herself in case the books
were right, you know which ones,
and concentrated on life.
The very softest thing of all
can ride, a galloping horse,
through the hardest of things...
So saith the Tao.

V

She envisioned peace, the West coast
of Ireland, toast and jam,
she sang, I am what I am.
Her doctor cut the cancer out again.

VI

At last her body agreed to loving
her body: tissue, cell
and platelet.
A concession reached
by permission of scars
after scalpels and sutures,
interventive invasions.
She hugged her body physical
to the metaphysical whole.
So, she thought, this is what it takes,
what it took; and still alive.

VII

Her lover came and went,
came and went,
regular as heart beat,
and she considered:

The Tao would tell me
I needn't pursue
whether you have left me
emptied or filled;
Emptied, we are filled;
going we return again.
Meanwhile,
the red pears ripen
and I eat them,
saying
nothing is sweeter
than these.

VIII

When chemotherapy was advised,
she washed and brushed her hair.
She braided it and cut the braid
and gave it tied in ribbon to her lover
[who loved her bald and back again].

When her hair fell out, they called her
Monkey, those three wee children
she loves, said she could trick-or-
treat without a costume,
brought bananas with their flowers,
told bald jokes ad infinitum,
dusted her head.

IX to "Blessed"

X

She wore the green scapular
from Donegal, hung it from her I.V.
pole with the blue gemmed cross
from the Sister,
the healing nuts from Maui.
The chemo flowed, baptismal rain.
She swallowed the herbs,
the pollens, the bitters,
the teas, the bioflavanoids,
the super C's, the ginko, the co-
enzymes. She listened
to her body, to her biorhymes,
to her Doctor, to her healer,
to her telephone ring,
to her breathing out
and breathing in and the pause
in between.

XI

Hello, she said, to the past when it called
so kindly, [so unconscious
of its intrusions] as if yesterday
were yesterday not twenty years,
thirty, away, as if this had all ben one continuous
life she'd lived.
She watched the burned bridges
reconstruct themselves again,
soulfully.

XII to "More"

XIII to "Earthly"

XIV to Hiatus

Ambrosia

The I.V. purrs at 90 drops
an hour; my body takes it
lying down.
-Nan Farady@

Hiatus

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