Cancer Support Group with Painting by Monet, and: Speed
Rent from DeepDyve- Cancer Support Group with Painting by Monet, and: Speed
Cancer Support Group with Painting by Monet
The door swings from cold to cold: the institutionallobby, like a train station, where we meet: a Dickensiantableau of collateral damage,
except for me, but, I say, “Next week I’ll looklike you,” to the woman with the hairless baby-look,blue knit cap loosely pulled, past embarrassment.
She’s depressed, in her second round, says her husband,after being cured for two years. I examine my lifeto see what part of it is made of this: I want to fit in.
One cause after the other: train tracks.We were in Chicago, my sister and I, age 9 and 12, sentalone (no parent would do that now) to the lake,
by train. The hollow bathroom, the scrub-lady,the old man. I made my sister sit on the bench, not stir.I meanwhile remained alert, my spine learning control.
The man who came in with me has multiple myeloma.His pale preoccupation with the body’sfailing. What is this love of living that turns to each
failing part, in wonder, in curiosity, as ifit were alien? The conductor waves the train on, aftera brief stop. This time we are on it. [End Page 40]
The woman cannot walk without help. It’s the neuropathy.To reach for meaning is to miss everything.To reach is to miss everything.
Monet made the train bear down through the snowwith persistent hooded headlights and roilingblack smoke. He made the man alongside walk
the opposite direction. Neither has much to do withthe other, yet each appears to be the other’sconsequence. The wooden fence and the young trees
are the spine of that dark beauty, holding each other upby repetition until the end, which is not in the painting.
Speed
What time is this we live in, speeded upso fast that songbirds fall behind?Where is Snuffy Smith, and Nina Gabaldin?Our whole seventh-grade class?They have been resurrected on Facebook;they e-mail with long autobiographies.This moving away and return is too franticfor my mind. It knows it can’t seewhat’s coming so it wants plenty of timeto prepare. My body wants this red fleeceshirt to last forever. It calls that prayer.My dear one’s body keeps making little flowersof cells the doctor cuts away before theyturn nasty. Many bodies in old age go crazylike this. Plus, too many people worktoo hard and pick up McDonald’s hamburgerson the way home. Their health is wrecked. [End Page 41] Others have no jobs, yet their alarm clocksstill go off in the morning. This is a worsekind of speed, seen from a standstill.
The quiet moon is still slipping in and outof its translucent dress, but secretlybacking away inches at a time, so we don’tnotice. It is dreaming of flying out of orbit.Maybe I will witness this after I have comethrough the fear and emerged into the wholething. Maybe what I thought was speedwill turn out to have been my own mind,clumsily trying to funnel everything throughone narrow channel. If so, it is wearing me out,this hard work of inventing the wordspeed over and over. [End Page 42]
Fleda Brown’s eighth collection of poems is No Need of Sympathy (BOA Editions). Her collection of essays is Growing Old in Poetry: Two Poets, Two Lives (Autumn House P), with Vermont poet laureate Sydney Lea, and her memoir is Driving with Dvorak (U of Nebraska P). She is professor emerita at the University of Delaware and past poet laureate of Delaware. She now lives in Traverse City, Michigan, and is on the faculty of the Rainier Writing Workshop, a lowresidency mfa program in Tacoma, Washington.
