New Moon

On this first new moon of the new year
Blessings be to Him, Creator, 
King of the moon, Chief of the stars.

Four years ago now since they told
What it was, what the persistent cough,
What I had growing inside my chest.

I remember from that time
That I had half a chance that first year,
Each year it would decline,

Half again and half again
Each changing of the calendar,
Each turning of the year.

So now three in a hundred 
Are the odds, the pot runs low 
Of lots. Lord leave me not with the dead.

Thirty times that first year they beamed
The sun into my chest dripped yew tree poison 
Into my blood, like hemlock it seemed.

A tumor metastasized in my brain
Small, just behind my right ear
I can still feel the hollow

From where they burned it out
Fit my head to a plastic mask
Just like a futuristic Dumas movie hero

Immunotherapy was almost my end
Pembro-lizumab type stuff, made me
Want to strip my skin off, but the cancer didn’t mind.

Back to the yew tree magic, and so
My hair came out, left me looking
Like Uncle Fester, low and sick.

Some days I faced all the pain
In my own strength, fierce. Those days
Came at the beginning, rarely again.

Life was a dark hole, as befits
A dark druidic poison
Tracing its pattern in my veins.

Dark also when my eyes clouded
Film of hazy gold veiling the world
Until I couldn’t read, drive, see the screens

Of all the multifarious little machines
We give our devotion and importance
So I was labeled disabled, capacity doubted

And even significance by wife, employer, friends,
Bound to the couch in chemical gloom
Half seeing flowers, seasons pass in their dance.

But for all the angst, the surgeon put it right
In ten minutes of opiate fog and flashing lights
Everything clear as crystal, shining new.

But of course the yew tree lost its magic
As all earthly tactics in this deadly fight
And inexorable the cancer grew.

I can sense it in these stilted words
Stultified, inane, repetitive, lame
Tedious changes of drugs and regimens

The tired feeling telling me that the game
Is over, the turn taken, the bird flown
Without a song before summer’s end.

But that Indian flower, five fingered leaf
Like the healing hand of the Lord of all,
In a miracle, brought me recovery, relief.

Along with fifty rounds of chemo, taking a toll
Body and mind, slowly poisoned, leaving
Me wallowing in dull grief.

So the insurance paid me out
My burying money, the doctor
And the service declaring me unfit

For official government office duty,
Gave me a pension, as close as it gets
To easy street, I doubt.

And now I sit listening upstairs
At the guitar shop, while the boy’s
Lesson plays out, chords and strumming

On the harp that is the foreshadowing
Of the things I wait for, rejoicing
In this likely last year of the world’s coming.

Snow clouds linger over mountains
Sun illumines an elegant skylight
Glow of warm wood on the walls

Wail of angry thrash metal
Mingling with hesitant flamenco
Noise flowing out and up, a fountain

Of accumulated musical wisdom
Evoking the disappeared hopes and wasted 
Work that were mine those ages ago.

This week of scans, brain first, next
Chest and neck and groin
Followed by doctor consultation,

Then the needle through the back
To drain the recurring pleural effusion
That cuts my breath and turns my frame crooked

The way leads ahead toward a concealed path
A closing of ways, satiated hunger, thirst
Finally quenched in the living stream.

But there will be a climb
To get there, poison administered in season
Or a sudden vanishing of the light

As when a benighted mountaineer
Finds his shadow cast across 
Vast forests below him, haloed

On the peak in that dying day, the world
Now a face of broken rock, the abyss
At his feet, the way home shrouded

But a simple song will lead him
Whistled in the night blue dusk
A single star will show the mountain

Where light dwells without shadow
Where joy springs without longing
Perfume of flowers forever unspent

But now this time between becoming
And realization, frosted windows
Opening on unknown woods

Meadows rich with golden flag
Sparrows hunting in the grass
Gold-tinged trees alive in the breeze

Barely heard prayers echo from mossy stone
The song keeps time with the moon,
Until the moon is no more

Ages pass in the sun-lit morning,
All the miraculous birds in the tops of the trees,
A river of crystal born in the rock.

So I will pass on, go up, rise,
Higher up, further in, according
To Your will. So be it. I am still.

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