fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Home Invasion

Laura Grace Weldon ~

Get out my green mug, round as a pregnant belly.
Casually pour grounds in the filter
despite monitoring devices warning
of an intruder’s presence.
Act normally. Breathe deeply.

Let the cosmic swirl of cream in hot coffee
remind me how small one lifetime is
in an infinite universe. Remember
the Vedas say God’s playfulness is expressed
through perpetual creation and dissolution.

Quell fear. Be peace.
Ignore creaks and groans as intruder
inches closer. Pretend
the future is a given,
as it was before
the diagnosis.

About the poet:

Laura Grace Weldon is the author of a poetry collection, Tending, and has a book of essays due out soon. She has written poetry with nursing-home residents, used poetry to teach conflict resolution and painted poems on beehives, although her work appears in more customary places such as Neurology, Verse Daily, J Journal, the penmen review, Literary Mama, Christian Science Monitor, Mom Egg Review and Pudding House. Her website is lauragraceweldon.com.

About the poem:

“Our most ordinary days seem unremarkable until we can no longer take them for granted.”

Poetry editors:

Johanna Shapiro and Judy Schaefer

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About the Poem

Comments

7 thoughts on “Home Invasion”

  1. So poignant, and speaks to me. For me, there was the “before,” and there is now. Each morning, I am reminded of my diagnoses as I take fistfuls of medications, prepare syringes of liquid oral medications, inject SQ meds, and connect my IV, all while my coffee is brewing. Cradle my coffee, work on my writing, photography, or painting while my IV infuses. The new normal.

    1. Love to you, Mimi. Powerful, equanimity. Keep writing, photographing and painting. Life gives life and it truly never ends, the sages tell.

    2. Mimi, it’s wonderful to hear that you make room for writing, photography, and painting. My friend and wise man Bernie DeKoven taught me that we are most alive when we are playful, which comes through us in many ways including our creativity.Here you are, living that truth.

  2. Thank you, Laura Grace. There’s knowing this and then ‘knowing.’ After decades through dissertation on communication in end of life care, I didn’t ‘know’ until three months after earning the degree and time to be with my family again that my husband took a mere 17 days from diagnosis to death, leaving me then knowing also what it meant to be a young widow, or any widow at all. Widow with kids. The future is this moment and that’s all there is. Thank you for this.

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