Cancer Songs

I. 
Take no thought for tomorrow - 
No more radical words for our progress-obsessed system
Don't think about tomorrow
Precludes stock options, house payments, cruise vacations
Super Bowl fantasies - in short the whole 
tackle and trim of pre-apocalyptic consumerist normalcy.
Take care of today is corollary
Perfectly suited to quarantine and prayer
Be here now we are instructed over and over
down through millenia, live for the day,
Tomorrow never comes. 

And so I want to ask, I want to ask
How long? How long until that 
Dawn with no tomorrow
Long night of no sunrise
Short coursing of the sun
At the end of the race?

When the blue birds come back forever
When the snow is finally gone
The rain blowing in from the south
When we all sit at the table
No longer contending over shadows,
Disputing the flickering histories of our cavern wall.

But that is not tomorrow
Instead, a sort of no-tomorrow.
Not worrisome, an easy burden, 
Consummation waited for since the beginning
beginning of whatever this is
whatever will be, world without end
healing waters from the great river,
the healing trees, music unending

And so without a thought for the mundane tomorrow
Daily chores, bills, work, status-seeking, gossip,
unperformed house repairs and unwritten poems
I ask again
How long?

II.
And so we buried Violet, honorary duchess
Our angora rabbit, under shroud and stone
Covered with tulips and strawflowers 
Her foot of ground, said a prayer for her sweet spirit
As we stood and spent a few tears.
And what was that solemn ceremony?
Where do the spirits of animals go, and why are we so 
Sure their fate is so different than ours?
Buried in her garden among sage and calendula
Where she made her lippety rounds 
weighed down with basalt stone and blossoms.
Or Ajax, leg-destroying hero dog for whom I spent
Hard labor building his cairn of milky quartz stone
Among the farewell-to-spring and poppies of a 
fire-singed green California hillside?
No such hero’s grave will I get in this refined age,
No shrine of river rock hauled to hilltop,
No shroud of old bedsheet, or should I just 
vanish like an old cat.
We all go our way, in our time, God send angels 
To guide us, but no word has come back from that
Far shore, except from He who told us he conquered 
Death, and promised resurrection, but He left again 
After a few days and hasn’t been seen since, and seldom
Heard from.

III.
Yesterday, May Day, wave the red flag, dance around the May pole,
Light the two fires to drive the cattle between, but we all huddle
Separated in our houses across nations and continents, while the
Charlatans still preach that there are more important things than 
Being alive – presumably pork chops airline revenue hotel vacancy rates
Fat women in Michigan getting hair colored and nails painted red white blue 
To which I can only say that there are more important things than dying - 
Though it comes for us all, no privilege, but rather a reckoning – 
Bird song, love, breathing the mountains again, swimming in the emerald sea,
A boy playing clarinet, gardens to come, smell of roasting chiles, winter’s chill.
Why climb this mountain holding death in our heart, why hazard the climb, 
And then turn back from the summit – life is the basic premise
Death the dollar flash and trim. Court life even as it flees. Hold in your heart hope of resurrection, cherish that consummation of life forever, but know that we humans cling to this vail of shadow as our natural habitat, 
shaped for its beauties and its terrors. 

IV.
Scenes from a childhood come unbidden to mind
Disjointed, carrying little apparent weight or meaning – 
A Christmas gathering at the Perkins (whoever they might
Have been or still be) where I had real mincemeat pie, 
Tiny concrete block church where an honest to God old Irishman 
Sang me a song about his name and about crocodiles on the Nile,
Tremendous water-oak in front of a house, long gone, where I 
found strange insects, sun coming up over far hills, spring days, 
exulting survival of night.
Now for me days of doctor consultation
Analyzing the recent scans, interpreting the electron clusters
Captured on screen, looking for other invaders, metastases 
(may no new thing arise) taste of fear coming again with the 
Five o’clock blues and with the morning cough – metallic and 
bitter as you may guess.

Author: Duncan MacNae

Exiled Gael, scion of the Dust Bowl, dweller within Divine Grace, admirer of mountains, I have made my peace with trout and the starlings. Looking for a river and healing trees. duncanmacduncan5@gmail.com View all posts by Duncan MacNae