Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

October Poem

By Shirley Adelman


October, when breast cancer
testimonials almost outnumber
Pharma ads. Survivors thanking
hospitals and medical staff for
today when tomorrow seemed
as improbable as breast cancer
yesterday.  Now, twenty-three
remembering the struggle,
to struggle on:

 

An adjunct rushing from treatment
to college to college until my body
gave out.
Walking from the sofa
                            to the kitchen,
a destination
                         I struggled to reach.

 

A Department Head argued,
I should have known
I had breast cancer before
starting the semester.
In the future, when the future
seemed as illusive as an income,
he threatened to give me
a midnight schedule at the Navy Yard,
a distant satellite campus.

 

He came close to fulfilling
his threat by giving me
evening classes in a tough
neighborhood where, waiting
for public transportation meant
risking a mugging.

 

Cruelty leaves scars deeper
than surgery, more lethal
than invasive breast cancer,
and so I cry.

 

I wonder: What is the average
lifespan of an adjunct working
from paycheck to paycheck,
dependent upon department
heads who teach the humanities,
but lack heart. 

 

Previously published in "Blue Collar Review," Fall 2016, pp.29-30

2 Poems by Shirley Adelman

Holding On

Winter afternoons,

         Post concussion:

Light glaring from windows,

Trips me up.

           Dizzy, staggering

From sink to table,

             Exhausted from,

Trying not to fall.

               I hold onto Whitman,

Like a child grasping

           a parent's hand,

Finding solace,

           In his words:

"I exist as I am, that is enough."

"Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman", 150th TH Anniversary Edition, Introduction by Harold Bloom, Penguin Classics, New York, 2005, ( Song of Myself ), p. 49.

 

*****

No, No

In the arms

of another,

the little girl

cried, "No,

Mommy No.

No, Don't go,"

as her mother

boarded -----

         a bus.

I fell back

to the gurney,

calling out,

"Let me-----go---

----Let me--------go"

-----until,

           an

             es

               the

               sia,

took me---------

           away.  

 

These poems appeared in Kaleidoscope Exploring the Experience of Disability Through Literature And The Fine Arts,
January 2020, p.49.

Her Shadow

My Shadow

Robert Louis Stevenson

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

Full Poem: Download My Shadow

Poems in Plague-time.

Poems and Quotations that resonated with me in the Time of Covid -19

 

March 27, 2020

There's a certain Slant of light,

Winter Afternoons –

That oppresses, like the Heft

Of Cathedral Tunes –

 

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –

We can find no scar,

But internal difference –

Where the Meanings, are –

 

None may teach it – Any –

'Tis the seal Despair –

An imperial affliction

Sent us of the Air –

 

When it comes, the Landscape listens –

Shadows – hold their breath –

When it goes, 'tis like the Distance

On the look of Death –

 

March 29, 2020

Samuel Beckett, The Unnameable

''I can`t go on, but I must go on. I will go on.''

(note... there are some different renditions.  These are the last words in the book)

 

April 12, 2020

Yiddish Proverb

If the rich could pay the poor to die for them, the poor would make a very nice living.

 

Random Death Poems

Emily Dickinson

Because I could not stop for death

 

I heard a fly buzz when I died

 

Haiku Death Poems

on a journey, ill:
my dream goes wandering
over withered fields   (Basho)

 

illness lingers on and on
till over Basho’s withered fields,
the moon    (Gimei)

 

Shisui’s Enso
Approaching death Shisui’s students asked him to write a death poem. Shisui “grasped his brush, painted a circle, cast the brush aside and died”. This symbol is known as the enso which is prominent in Zen Buddhism and indicates the emptiness of all things.
Mary Oliver
When Death Comes

War Everywhere

It is Spring.
A rabbit made his home
in my yard and did not run away,
when I spoke to him.

I hold on to
this picture in a dark, windowless
room with six TVs blasting
Death notices:
For patients plugged-in
Fo bags of diluted poisons.

 

Author Bio: Shirley Adelman

This poem appeared in: Kaleidoscope: Exploring the Experience of Disability through Literature and the Fine Arts, No. 73, July 2016. An online journal to be viewed at www.udsakron.org and www.scribd.com

Two Poems by Shirley Adelman

Equal at Last

A teenager, moon faced from steroids,
a halo of wispy hair round her baseball cap.

A shrunken woman alone, taking half steps
with a walker.
A son lifts his mother to a wheelchair,
"a piece of crap," he says as it rolls away.
"Donated." "See you three months,"
she announces, smiling, pleased to have
a date with the future.

The regulars are at home, snoozing between
rounds, complaining about sandwiches too
dry to eat, waiting it out for packets of mayo.

Here in the Infusion room we are equal, at last.
All poor, robbed of health, pale, wanting kindness,
a hot cup of sweet coffee, carefully placed
in our cold hands, something to hold onto.

Some will recover, and forget to remember
how the poor live: day to day.

* "Equal at Last" was previously published in "Blue Collar Review," Winter 2005-2006

 

A Perfect Pirouette

I rarely saw Zane,
yet I knew her,
the way one 
knows the heart
of a character,
drawn so deftly
she slips into
one's life.

Cutting carrots,
mending a scarf,
her voice returns,
from letters,
signed with love.
I see her dancing
on the page,
like a perfect 
   pirouette. 

 

In memory of my granddaughter, Zane Kenig, who filled our lives with love.

Zane was a dancer, a student, and writer who battled anorexia for many years. She died from the disease shortly after turning twenty-two. I treasure her many letters, in which she shared her thoughts and feelings, in our on-going correspondence.

 

Ordinary Light

by Tracy Smith

Tracy Smith,  Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton, was recently appointed U.S. Poet Laureate. Her memoir, Ordinary Light, is fascinating and inspiring. It is the story of an ordinary/extraordinary daughter in an African-America family whose incandescent memories are a picture of her America. 

This is really the story of a daughter and a mother. There is hope here in her book for our country during what is, for some of us, a dark time.

NYT Review, April 2015

Tracy Smith PBS Interview. (seven minutes)

Latest Edition

by Carol J. Rhodes 

Grade school, first bicycle,
high school, first date, first kiss,
college, first car, first job,
third floor walk-up flat.
Bought latest edition of Cooking for One. 

Engagement, marriage, honeymoon,
newness of sleeping in the arms of love,
instead of a kiss at the door.
first house, dinner parties, trips.
Gave Cooking for One to a single friend.
Bought latest edition of Elegant Meals for Two. 

Children, carpools, Little League games,
empty nest, daughters-in-laws,
doctors, hospital, funeral,
strangeness of  small apartment.
Gave Elegant Meals for Two to newlyweds
across the hall.
Bought latest edition of Cooking for One.

Author Bio: Carol J. Rhodes lives in Houston, Texas with a household zoo of two poodles and four cats.  She plays bridge once a week, and always has an online Scrabble game going with her best friend.  She can be reached at: rhodes.cATatt.net

Children Play on the Seashores of the World

   On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.

   The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.

They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.

They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets. Pearl-fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again. They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets.

The sea surges up with laughter, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach. Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, even like a mother while rocking her baby's cradle. The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach.

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships are wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play. On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.

Rabindranath Tagore: Gitanjali

Sunset, Poipu, Kauai, March 2017