Brown Calendar

I've been away. I know. I promised this to be daily bread. But the thing is..

Life has a tendency of getting in the way of itself.

I was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in 2016 on the day we accepted a foster child into our home.

I went through treatment, had surgery, completely reshaped my body and learned how to use my colostomy and dramatically shifted my body image. We adopted the child who needs daily support more than some other children.

Daily bread sometimes isn't poetic. Sometimes, it's just harvesting the grain, milling it, mixing the dough, letting it rise, and baking it.

That said, I have begun writing again, in fits and spurts, not daily, but as I process what's happened to me.

It is now a year after my surgery and I am due for my annual checkups so I'm looking at my medical calendar on my iphone, which my wife called the Brown Calendar.

I think it's rather poetic...don't you. Sometimes, poetry isn't written in words. It's written by the life you live and only written down later on. Maybe that's the answer to my original question: How does a poet attempt to view and experience the world as a poet in a world that does not reward those characteristics?

There is no reward, but the life. There is no view but the poet's. There is no world to experience but the poetry within it.

That said, here's a fresh poem about my calendar.

****

Brown Calendar

It started as a joke. My first appointment

with the radiation oncologist

made the diagnosis real. My mother, sister, wife, friend

and barely new foster child were there

as they spelled out the next 6 weeks,

where they would cook the tumor in my

rectum (and all the surrounding tissue)

and shrink it, like an overfried hamburger.

They were frustrated that the chemotherapy

hadn’t started yet and, seeing the need

to organize my treatment in time and space,

my wife, the smile who kept me from dying,

made the Brown Calendar and shared it

with everyone’s iPhone so everyone would know

where and when I’d be treated.

The tumor

shrank from 8 cm to just under 2 before the surgery

to reshape my body in order to save my life.

The radiation also burned the nerves in my penis

so I leak like a rain gutter after a rain

and the boner medication doesn’t work.

Brown, the color of shit. The color disgusts me.

Brown, the color that signifies I survived.

The color empowers me. Brown, the color

Of not being intimate. The color abandons me.

Brown, the color of my calendar.

The color counts my hours, my days.

And it started as a joke.