And So

For Elizabeth Harding (1945-2003)

•

Five years they said you had to live,
since you asked that day,
if you must know, and you did,
weeping in the doctor's office

you live five years
I live twenty

we all have a death sentence
you die sooner, I die later

such are the lives we live
there is some continuity
in the blossoms and roots and leaves

and all these things you have done since
you heard the word -

meditate, weep bitter tears,
ask why me of all people

think of nothing on a mountaintop,
drink herbal tea

you who marched with the left

funny how the oppressed were always
on the other side of town,
you never thought you would be the one
to be visited

as if even in the darkest of decades
when you organized against the powerful
you relied on the healthiness of your body
to help you through the witchhunts

—it is not as if you wouldn't have done
these sometime anyway -
no matter how much
you were rushing
from one thing to another

Iran,
health care,
Nicaragua,
PATCO

the heart yearns to know,
the head does too,
maybe a death of someone else,
would have rung it in,
or a Bach cantata

grand old lady of the left,
at 68
or 75
or 83

one thing would have led to another
you surely would have set off on this journey
sooner or later,
as surely as I am standing here

-- just not today,
the birds in the trees,
the boats on the river

the sun in the sky,
the wind in the trees

waking every morning
in those early days,
suddenly remembering the diagnosis

the utter stoniness of it
as you looked out at the neighbor mowing the lawn
on the summer's day

the good life you had
before this suddenly came,
finally finding someone you love,
marrying and raising with me our longed for family

remembering the moment,
reliving it over and over
like a car crash

the before and after,
the dream and the nightmare

asking yourself what you could
have done differently

was it the coffee
was it the alcohol
was it the plutonium
was it the PCBs

why you
did it run in your family

as if you were the one
who was to blame

weeping every night
as you go to sleep

cancer world cancer world
welcome to the cancer world

entering as if through
a portal in the wall
the labyrinth of dreams

slowly making
your way down Main Street
in a golden wheelchair
before which people part
like schools of fish

the Saugatuck River
where you ran and played
as the River Lethe

talking to the ferryman
as he takes you across
until you realize
what is happening

the oddness,
the connection,
the energy,
juxtaposition

sleep, sleep,
the longing to sleep

like a dolphin
submerging
and resurfacing
all night

waking up in a sweat
as if you had wrestled
a beast

and maybe you had

then one day waking up
and just as mysteriously as it started
getting on with it

wherever it may lead
wherever it may go

let the chips
fall
where they may

smelling the flowers,
going shopping

reading
everything you possibly can
about this monster that wants to kill you

and then going off to do
battle with it

cancer research was
the frontier
internet was the means

conventional medicine was just
another place

checking out
the holistic healing sites
if only to rest your anxious mind

wading through the charlatans
the gurus
the hustlers
the quacks
mixed in with the real things

finally choosing a mixture
of the alternative and conventional
and sticking with it

radiation
chemotherapy
a low fat diet
of olive oil
organic fruits
and vegetables

yoga
mediation
and reiki

the ups and downs
and all arounds
slowly zeroing in on a support group
of mostly older women that nurtured you

another health care worker, how hard that must have been
a woman whose husband walked the week of the mastectomy
a woman who brought her feminism to the table
a woman whose god did not answer her prayers
a women who dreamed of living long enough to see
her daughter graduate from high school
a woman married to a millionaire, who called breast cancer "the equalizer"

walking the streets
an older woman now,
marked by pain, certain stoop
in your walk,
certain look on your face

you who were the ivory snow girl,
the high school basketball player
the model child,
the most likely to succeed
to whom everything was given

thinking of those in the support group,
all they did and said

the terror and the sadness
and the bravery, inextricably mixed together

others who ask what you are in for
and you say stage four breast cancer
and they turn away

cutting out of your life
everything you no longer need,
like the surgeon of a mastectomy,
the red wine you loved,
the dilettantes you hated,
even the subscription to the New York Times,
who knows how much time you have left

in a meditation circle one day
going with the flow of the pain,
there may never be a cure,
learning to live with the terror,
meditating, like a waterfall falling on itself
thinking of nothing

you who raced from one thing
on to the next great thing
success was going somewhere
and now you are nowhere

the meeting with the healer from
the Philippines
whose heralded gunk you bought
which did not work,
all you remember now
is the acrid taste

a quiet acupuncturist
from Chinatown
who didn't cure you
but, for whatever it is worth,
mysteriously helped
the pain

learning to love yourself
even as your body gives way
in a country where success
is health and infirmity is
failure

but in a society where
black is white
and war is peace
what do you expect

scars under your clothing
one thing, even
the space for an empty breast

but losing your red hair
after the second chemotherapy
is another thing,

how humiliating to be humiliated,
and so everyone can see, your baldness
like the badge of a concentration camp survivor
in your head

walking to the train
walking to the park
walking to the doctor's office
walking to the bodega

people not sure how to talk to you
when they spot you walking
so they cross the street

people who say
you look so well these days
as if they are surprised you are
not dead

doing a visualization exercise some recommended
picturing the tumor in your body shrinking leaving you entirely
purely gone imagine

harder still to visualize a world without
insurance companies and polluters
the death machine and the military industrial complex

marching in the breast cancer march
protesting the politics of cancer
money for cancer research not for war
a refreshing change of pace

focusing on the multinational corporations role
and the banks and their coverup for a change

on the one hand blaming them for the cancer
how unfair that you should be their victim

on the other hand sitting there realizing
it was your life, make of it what you will,
in future generations the injustice may be righted,
but what good is that to you,
now is all we get

how beautiful the trees
how beautiful the sun
how beautiful the sky

might as well make the best of it
life is not fair

suddenly the energy of the dead flowing
though your bones
like those Salvadorean revolutionaries
you visited on your travel team
so many years before,
their strange cheerfulness amid
the atrocities

que sera sera,
so this is what they meant

five years, they said,
since you asked,
learning to walk a new way
now that you are bald

the terror
and the laughter

the bad days
mixed with the incredible joyousness
exploring the zen of napping,
the power of prayer

walking around like a bump on a log,
then one day,
head held high like Sinead O'Connor,
with a new kind of Amazonian sexiness

five years, they said

taking your dress off to make love
the scar right there,
your blonde bombshell wig
on the nightable
other breast being sucked
by yours truly
how people adapt

that there is not sex after cancer
let it never be
said

because you either move forward or back
there is no in between

30% of men leave women within
a year after the diagnosis
we read somewhere

honey, I am glad I stayed
though that being said
nothing prepared me
for the process

and as we made love
sometimes I confess
I pictured another face
not Susan Sarandon or Marilyn Monroe
or Halle Berry

but yours, my darling, the year we met
shining in the bars,
the discos,
the parks,
the restaurants

—that vow to love each other
In sickness and in health
until death do us part
now with a different emphasis

but still you fight
and still you scuffle
and still you try to smell the flowers
in the same
breath

one month
convinced you are cured
from a triple stem cell chemotherapy
our vacation to Puerto Vallarta
the healing power of the water and sunset

and the next minute plunged back
into the cancer world
because of a problem with the MRI
because of a problem with a single speck

raging, howling, weeping

not sure in retrospect which is worse
the cure or the disease

after the first chemo, thinking it was not so bad

after the second chemo, thinking it was not so bad

after the third chemo, thinking ,
wait a minute,
this is

BAD

so this is what in the support group they meant

retreating back into that womb of grief
curling up inside
for yet another segment

in fact soon after you learn the cancer has spread
to the bones and lungs and brain and bladder

looking out at the sunset from the hilltop,
the traffic buzzing below, thinking you may not be here
a year from now,
your life like the dandelions growing through the cracks
in the asphalt parking lot of the abandoned box factory

like a monument to something
but you don't know what in the night

wondering where you have been all your life,
but something tells you nothing is wasted

besides the struggle
prepared you for these
later ones in a way
you had not anticipated

like the time when you told an acquaintance
you had cancer
and they asked you if cancer ran in your family
so you said, after only a moment's hesitation,
yeah, it runs in my family,
it runs in the human race

no, it is not as if you wouldn't have done
these things,
if the cancer hadn't happened

if the EKG hadn't led
to the MRI
and the MRI hadn't led
to the EMG

you would have,
it's just that
everything incredibly speeds up,
once you get the cancer

like the life cycle of a flower
unfolding in that
famous filmstrip

or the vision of one's
whole life flashing
before one's eyes,
just before drowning
beneath the waves

these days
at the hospital
your friends gathered
all around you

Bill, Joseph,
Melanie, Rod,
Mike, Anne

we joke, we buy organic carrots,
now no one is sure how much time
is left

you tell Melanie to sit next to
Joseph, Jon next to Jackie
an organizer
to the end

outside the light falls on the maple leaves tips
the boats flow down the shimmering river

some days we talk of the past,
the photographs of our family adorning
the walls of the hospital

some days we talk of the future,
our son Alejo playing on the floor with his men

war,
cutbacks,
genocide,
racism

what world will he inherit,
you ask me,
the New York Times you have started to read again
just before the end

"it's a balance, isn't it,"
you say later, looking out at the leaves

the religious who speak a language of the spirit,
and yet, in spite of, or because of this
zone out the injustice
in the world

the Marxists who show you a better world is possible
oh, language of the class struggle
and yet which scarcely prepares you
for the terrible journey that lies ahead

looking out the window
the light falling on the maples leaf tip

now you are balanced as if on the tip of a pin
laboring under the chug of the oxygen machine,
though you are still a Marxist,
you said

five years they gave you,
only because you asked the number

you don't need to be a rocket scientist
to do the math
you don't need to be a weatherman
to know which way the wind blows

—or to hear, like the howl of a wolf,
far off,
the premonition
of your approaching death

how far you have come,
since that day you heard the word

how far you still have
to go,
to get to that place
where rabbits and children
play amid the sumac

so much to be done,
so little time to do it in,
so much to pack,
so much to unpack

for that great journey

so many hellos, which are goodbye,
so many goodbyes which are
hello

and what a long
strange trip it has been

so many doors that open
while so many other doors close

so many people gathered who love you,
so many people you have grown
to love,

Leanne, the two Sarahs, Bill, Marti, Tom,
Marilyn, Patty, Melanie, Maria,

your fellow workers from the hospital,
the women from your monthly book group,
the survivors from the cancer support network,
the nurses union,
not to mention your comrades
from the Democratic Workers Party

—turning away I realize I love you,
I always loved you,
your fighting spirit, yes,

but also, harder to see amid the politicos,
your gentleness

soaring eagle's presence that will be with us always,
perhaps the ashes to be spread
underneath the spreading ailanthus tree

so many tears in laughter,
so much laughter in sorrow

so many things you knew
and yet didn't know you knew

though now you increasingly
gaze inward, as if
upon an inward sea

five years, they said,
and it has been nine years

—I know you would have made
the leap sometime,
it is just things sped up so much
once you got the cancer

childhood,
marriage,
motherhood,
dying

you go now,
I join you later

it has been so wonderful
to know you, despite the ending,
it is okay if you have
to go now

I love you,
Alejo loves you,
our friends love you,
the Left loves you

we are all here,
gathered around you,
but it is okay
if you have to go away

—there is some
continuity, after everything,
in the wind, the earth,
the flowers in the garden,
the leaves—

so many gates to unlock,
so many sagas to close,
so many windows to look through,
so many signs to behold

so many boundaries to cross,
so much wilderness to wander,
so many mountains to climb
from the highest peak of which
you finally glimpse
the sea—

so much to unlearn
in this life
and so little time
to unlearn it in -

and so—