A cancerous life; Crying
By: David Alexander McFarland
A cancerous life
It’s most like walking in summer
sunshine on alga-slippery rocks
knee-high in a fast stream,
negotiating turns, getting past
overhanging, fallen branches,
swift currents that threaten to
put me down into the cold,
subtracting all my heat,
any thoughts or plans,
with all the sudden explosion of
winter wet that wants my complete
surrender to the flow that will
separate all my parts,
push every atom
finally to the sea.
Crying
She has seen me cry
too many times,
oh, yes, from the pain,
the constancy, a mean
persistence spreading
upwards from the root
of me until there is no end
to it, added instantly
to all those times before
because the body remembers
and keeps locked away
for later, recalling every pain—
memories constantly renewed.
And I have cried for myself
when I see an end, so I cry
for her, then for family and
friends who pray for me and call,
visit, send cards, who give
hope on the better days.
I cringe before the dark,
remembering the subtractions
throughout my life, parents
and grandparents, a sister,
too many friends, school pals;
afraid of that pain, I cry
even though I know
morphine or another drug
will make you comfortable.
So I might go not knowing
the moment of
my great translation.
I wonder what
I should truly desire.
David Alexander McFarland lives in northwestern Illinois where the Mississippi River runs east to west. Some of his fiction has appeared internationally, and his poetry is in Coe Review, Deep South Magazine, and Santa Anna River, with two poems scheduled to appear shortly.
"In my thirties, I took up whitewater paddling. So most of the imagery comes from those river trips. Thinking about my pre-cancer life compared to my now normal made me think of that dissipated energy of my youth, my friends and our trips then, the continuing difficulties of adjusting to this new world with its uncertainties, its pains and pills, put me in a water frame of mind. Having an aggressive cancer sometimes makes us sufferers (never victims) think of how it is to walk far these days, how uncertain one’s footing always is on wet or snowy paths. The connection solidified and strengthened in one instant to almost the version you have."