Saying Goodbye

Donald Hall has to be one of my favorite poets. I was all giddy with joy when I finally got to meet him last year. But there was one thing that kind of perplexed me a bit. Almost all of the poetry he's written over the past ten years has dealt with in one way or another the death from cancer of his wife an equally talented poet Jane Kenyon. Then I lost someone to cancer, and all I could do was write on the subject, it was obsessive. So I sat down and took an older poem I wrote at seeing my mother in the hospital and re-working it to the last night of her life. My way of saying I will never write about it anymore. Except for touching on it on occassion I've for the most part kept to that.

A Brief History Of Cancer

What a night, when we were lined up

like a coffin ship, to wonder why

it must happen here? Your room

is so sterile and clean and I am finished

holding your hand and looking into eyes

that no longer remember I’m your son.

I want to sleep, to move onto newer dreams,

if any dreams come at all.

At least I said goodbye.