What is Life?

What is life?

If not a poem,
A demonstration of
speculative hope

And what is hope?
If not a dream,
An integration of
want and need

And what is need?
If not a fact,
Of fundamentally
basic lack

And what is lack?
If not a hole,
A deviation from
seamless flow

And what is flow?
If not a part,
Of all ancestral
memory's start

~~~Your Fellow Traveler~~~

Flowtrvlr

2002

Hello Again...

Once again there has been a long gap between posts...this time four years. Many reasons, none of them really important. Perhaps the best thing is to just post and not apologize for any time lag. So, that said, here is a poem I wrote for a friend who was serving in Afghanistan quite a few years ago - the time does go by quickly...but it is still pertinent today.

Cancer is, verse 1

Cancer is

Invasive
Pervasive
A bad dream
That won't go away

Horrendous
Tremendous
A nightmare
That stays in the day

One minute you're normal
Relatively speaking
Next moment you're shrieking
To relative strangers

And relatives come
To be with you and hold you
But when they go home
You can't go with them

Because you've got cancer
And cancer has got you
And now you are different
And nothing's the same

Cancer is

Hateful
Ugly and spiteful
Full of dis - eases
That give you no rest

Cancer is

Tiring
Exhaustive, expiring
You just want this nightmare
Of daytime to end

Sometimes you're lucky
And cancer is vanquished
Cut out by ruthless
Surgeons with blades

But you are still thankful
For scars that run crazy
Because for the blades
The cancer would spread

But cancer cut out
Is not cancer over
There is no peacetime
Once wartime has ceased

Because of a small chance
Or maybe a large chance
That cancer may come back
Or linger within

So you never rest easy
No sleeping as babies
For once cancer has you
It never lets go

Artwumyn 2008

Time Stands Still

The last post to my blog was in 2007. Over two years have passed since. Why the gap? In a word - Cancer. I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer in October of 2007. In January of 2008 I underwent a mastectomy. Physical recovery was normal, but emotional and spiritual recovery has taken much longer than I could have imagined. I went through all the stages of grief, both for the loss and for the change in body image. In the last few months I have felt ready to take on more of life.

This is much abbreviated, but I may post more detail later. I just wanted to comment on the gap in dates before I began posting poetry again...and letting it flow.

Just letting it flow...

Life is a journey, a path through the unknown and the unfamiliar, which then becomes the known and the familiar…some of it loved, some of it unloved, some of it memorialized for quick reference, and some of it passed so quickly as to be instantly forgotten - and missed. Linger on the path…
and let it flow…
Flowtrvlr 2007