Cancer
I recommend having cancer
as a means of gaining sight
of just who your true or genuine
friends are, and who are not:
just who will stay by your side
when the going gets rough (and
it will get rough), or who will
disappear, as if you’d suddenly
turned contagious--vanish as if
they had never existed in your life.
I recommend cancer as a means
of discovering just who the true
you is, and if you might be willing
and able to have that person stand
in as substitute friend--someone who
will remain by your side always
and never desert you: come face
to face, body to body with that
other healthy person you have
been posing as for years.
I recommend cancer as a means
of staying alive, of giving birth
to a spirit, a soul you’ve never known
you possessed, born of pain and
displeasure you can convert
to joy, Emily D’s “formal feeling,”
if you’ve got guts enough to stay at home,
shut up alone with yourself in a body
that feels as if it may have left town for good
(“It never phones, it never writes!"),
I recommend cancer as a means
to feel endless gratitude for the genuine
friends who did remain at your side,
so you would not require yourself
as a substitute, but could stay compatible
with being disencumbered, gifted with
innate love, with Orphic intuition,
purification, exultation, transcendence:
the “sweet used to be that was once you and me”--
and keeps coming back like a song.
William Minor has published seven books of poetry—most recently Some Grand Dust (finalist for the Benjamin Franklin award); and Gypsy Wisdom: New & Selected Poems. A chapbook--Another Morning--is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. He has also published two memoirs: The Inherited Heart and Going Solo: A Memoir, 1953-1958. A recent YouTube video (with original music--Bill on piano) features the title poem from the chapbook (“Another Morning by William Minor”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epJ7eFylCoQ).
I recommend having cancer
as a means of gaining sight
of just who your true or genuine
friends are, and who are not:
just who will stay by your side
when the going gets rough (and
it will get rough), or who will
disappear, as if you’d suddenly
turned contagious--vanish as if
they had never existed in your life.
I recommend cancer as a means
of discovering just who the true
you is, and if you might be willing
and able to have that person stand
in as substitute friend--someone who
will remain by your side always
and never desert you: come face
to face, body to body with that
other healthy person you have
been posing as for years.
I recommend cancer as a means
of staying alive, of giving birth
to a spirit, a soul you’ve never known
you possessed, born of pain and
displeasure you can convert
to joy, Emily D’s “formal feeling,”
if you’ve got guts enough to stay at home,
shut up alone with yourself in a body
that feels as if it may have left town for good
(“It never phones, it never writes!"),
I recommend cancer as a means
to feel endless gratitude for the genuine
friends who did remain at your side,
so you would not require yourself
as a substitute, but could stay compatible
with being disencumbered, gifted with
innate love, with Orphic intuition,
purification, exultation, transcendence:
the “sweet used to be that was once you and me”--
and keeps coming back like a song.
William Minor has published seven books of poetry—most recently Some Grand Dust (finalist for the Benjamin Franklin award); and Gypsy Wisdom: New & Selected Poems. A chapbook--Another Morning--is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. He has also published two memoirs: The Inherited Heart and Going Solo: A Memoir, 1953-1958. A recent YouTube video (with original music--Bill on piano) features the title poem from the chapbook (“Another Morning by William Minor”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epJ7eFylCoQ).