The ripple swells, a wave is building.
I wait, standing in the warm ocean.
I feel the energy nearing me— growing, bulging
...
With every Biopsy, a part of me dies,
A part of my body, a part of my spirit,
Like a rock beaten down by the constant drip-drip of water,
Slowly, surely, wearing, gnawing.
...
Last year’s garden was bleak,
A few annuals were all she could do,
Mammograms and Mastectomies, Radiation and Reconstruction,
They took up most of her time.
...
He sat at the head of the Thanksgiving Day table,
Head down, staring at-nothing.
Words of conversation slipping and sliding past him,
He heard not the sounds, he heeded not the words.
...
Shells, broken shells- everywhere,
On boardwalks, parking lots, crunching, crackling underfoot!
Poor Mercenaria Mercenaria, what happened to you?
...
I stand on a barren, ravaged, plain of pain
Isolated on this tortured mesa of malignancy.
Here, far from the world of normalcy
I search for a place of solace, a place of consolation.
...
One is shiny, the other is dull.
One is streamlined and smooth, the other is blunt and chunky.
Their names tell all—Silversides and Mummichog, aristocrat and commoner.
...
Why was I writing my 1961 thesis on the Antoine Equation when I could have been writing poetry like my 2005, “What is Love”?
Because I didn’t know that this Caterpillar could fly.
Why was I writing a 1975 Patent Application on “Novel Copolymers” when I could have been writing poetry like my 2006, “Why is the Rhyme so Sublime”?
...