Baby Brook at 3 months

How Can I Feel so Well?

How is it that I feel so well
when everything is so wrong?
Five days a month in the hospital.
A 96-hour Taxol drip.
Slow, slow poison, which, it seems,
my body doesn’t mind too much.
And which, it seems, has shrunk the pesky tumor
in my neck quite remarkably.

One more month and then a PET scan
will show the progress,
or not.
I do not worry.
It doesn’t much matter.
My energy is good, and I am happy.

I notice I can climb the stairs from the lake
without resting.
How is this possible, after a full year
of stopping halfway, resting, panting, thighs throbbing.?
Now, my legs are strong
And my breath steady.
I hum James Brown, “I feel good now.”

The sore on my tongue is still there, off and on,
five months now.
Is it tongue cancer again?
Or is it breast cancer, a terrible metastasis,
a drifting of the cells from my neck into my mouth?
Minor surgery for that in another week.
A slide under a microscope will tell the story.

I am prepared for the worst,
but it doesn’t much matter.
I enjoy my food, a little chocolate.
And I feel quite well.

Last week, on one of our last warm summer days,
I paddled my kayak around the point into the next cove.
My arms were strong.
The late morning sun was radiant on the still water,
and the Great Blues, usually shy, were
flapping and squawking across my bow.
I felt tired, but happy.
More like myself, really content.

The veins in my arm have given up,
withdrawn, become elusive,
announcing “stick me no more.”
So now I have a state of the art “low profile” port
in my upper chest wall, it’s tubing
snaking up through my jugular vein,
creating an interesting pattern over my collarbone,
just above the perfectly round quarter-size protrusion,

And you know what?
it doesn’t matter.
Vanity has flown.
My chest only slightly more mutilated.
I feel great.
I have even resumed my morning exercise routine,
my Tibetan longevity rites,
a little Yoga, stretching my flaccid muscles.

Oh, I almost forgot about my eyes.
Successful cataract surgery a few weeks ago.
My eyesight measures better and I can drive at night,
But my vision is still slightly blurry,
and my eyes very dry and scratchy, requiring
frequent drops
and ointments.
I ordered new lenses this week.
I am waiting patiently for better vision.

But
It occurs to me to wonder.
Is this the lull before the storm?
Pre-termination zest?
A brief reprieve from
chronic fatigued and hopelessness?
The last hurrah
before the delicate balance tips awry,
and the whole system collapses?

Or is it the wonder, the exultation
of Anatole Bruillard’s “being on the edge of being,”
the terror yet to be revealed.