In the beginning, the white-frocked horseman of her apocalypse
Eyes averted, blurts she has pancreatic cancer in store
She rocks, absorbs our reeling shock then, pensive, quips
A curious “Well, I’ve never done cancer before.”
Fumbling with forms and facts in cheerless waiting rooms
She regales us with tales from her career as a Navy wife
Three cherished years in postwar Japan she relives and subsumes
In incurably merry memories of a zestfully lived life
In the middle, emerging greyly from another grueling test
The hospital directory’s alien “-ologies” and “-atrics”
Cause her to chuckle as she reads, pretending not to rest
“I’m so glad I’ll get to die someplace exotic!”
A winner in a losing battle, no cause she saw for why-ning
Resolute she rallied for a family trip to New York City
Boosted by a Broadway play, a tour and some fine dining
Nearing escape velocity from death’s gravity
In the end, the ruinous thief was something mercifully other
Something sudden and biliary that we did not expect
A stealthy ninja stroke that clove the waning moon of mother
The surgeon tried but could not mend the vile duct
In hospice care, no tying tubes or talk of chemo any more
Little talk at all, the less said now she knew the better
Haiku pointing at a transcendent shore
Haiku pointing
Pointing
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Copyright Deborah A. McGlauflin, January 2013. All rights reserved.
