Bone Marrow Biopsy Reverberations
The oncologist instructs you to lie face down
like you’re going to get a massage
except you’re not going to get a massage.
And you think of the thousands of dollars
you spent while hooked on erotic massage
during the final years of your third marriage.
The oncologist plunges a needle as long as your middle finger
into the base of your spine
and says it’ll feel like a bee sting.
And you remember sixty summers ago
when you and both younger brothers
were stung by bees … right between the eyes.
Was that the summer you failed to protect one of them
from bullies? Or was it the summer you misread the other’s
raised-arm alarm for a vigorous swimming-hole hello?
You’re told you’re a good patient with a high pain tolerance
and you flash back to twelve years of Catholic schools and you think:
no — obedient & stoic with high tolerance for authority figures.
You’re told you’ll get the bone marrow biopsy results
in two weeks and you realize you’ve heard the word “marrow”
more times this month than in all your seventy-three years.
And you remember your mother telling you when you were a child:
eat your baked beans — they’ll put marrow in your bones
and you had no idea if that were true … or even what it meant.
Return to Gamble Garden
(Palo Alto, California, April 1, 2021)
We masked visitors return to gorgeous Gamble Garden
as if nothing notable happened this past year
where a sinking sun still backlights side-by-side tall trees
as if nothing changed not even the calendar
as if we hadn’t been savagely shark-sharp chewed up
and nearly swallowed into an abyss of loveless regret
as if nothing happened this past year
as if not damaged by a son’s renewed estrangement
by siblings struggling with disease & demons
by friendship riven & still unrestored
cheery cherry blossoms still in full fragrant bloom
as if nothing changed not even the calendar
as if all the tumult & tragedy out there & in here
all the ignorance & ignominy willful & clueless
all the waste & haste & existential dread
from a whole year gone have all gone
to wherever nightmares migrate
after they’ve had their foul fun with us.