My Poetry to Protect Me

Thought I'd shake it up a bit and share a poem with you. I wrote this following my leukemia diagnosis, before my relapse and subsequent transplant.

Last March

This is the hour of lead remembered if outlived.
--Emily Dickinson

The doctor bears the news
to the unwitting patient
who hears sound absent meaning.

Thought drains away like blood
as she stares out the window, inert.
A gray-caped sky forces itself
upon the struggling landscape.

Please, no.

The yard is swathed in decay.
Scraggy oaks plead for reprieve,
for any sign of life amid the sepia.
Stray leaves curl their fingers
around clumps of limp grass.
Even the birds are bereft,
without song.

A voice thanks the poor man;
the phone falls away.
Tick … tick … tick …
the hour of lead begins.