Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...

If you're lucky.

I said I'd post another poem "tomorrow", on the 23rd, I believe. Well, I...just didn't. That's because my six-month scan was approaching, along with brain/sinus scans...and to be blunt, I was freaked.

I don't know why I didn't think that would happen. I guess I tend to think of myself as obligated to be superhuman, in some way. Sometimes I really do feel acceptance of physical death, and truly believe that we are part of the cycle of life...but that doesn't prevent me from experiencing and displaying a very human survival instinct.

Anyway, the news was better than good. My scans were normal, showing the same area of "uptake" on the PET scan as before, and my oncologist said that the way this appears on the scan suggests that it is bone healing, rather than active malignancy. I asked him what he thought he would see if the same area that was biopsied nine months ago was biopsied now, and he said that it was entirely possible that no cancer cells would be found at all. That doesn't mean I'm cured, but it's certainly a good sign!

Right now I don't feel like dwelling on all this, except to comment that I have a certain amount of "survivor's guilt"--as if there were a finite amount of "health" to go around, and I'm taking it away from someone more worthy. Not rational, but a real feeling nonetheless.

If I keep talking about this, I'll just intellectualize further...so, as Rocky the Flying Squirrel says, "And now, here's something you'll really like!" I don't actually know if you'll like it--it's another old poem--but it gets me out of my navel-gazing state.

This one is a sort of ecstatic song of praise.

SONG FOR THE MYSTERY

Errant ways give way

before you. You are even

closer than the sun.

Moon and glancing stars

are clay before you, one

whose holy carriage

gives back, clear and hard,

the word that leaves me wordless:

in Goddess' fire born.

Praise be to the lord of questions;

praise unto the god of mirth;

praise to your unceasing quest,

dark night before your second birth.

Song will rise above the answers,

heaven flame into the earth.