Cancer is an overgrowth, a kudzu:
Tangling and strangling legitimate life.
Chemo is a killing, a burning out:
Burning down to ashy carbon, indiscriminately
But cancer, did you know that I am a poet?
My job is to cull through the chaos
with tweezers and magnifier.
I have wings
On shoulder blades and ankles
Just big enough for hovering me inches above the terrain,
Traversing without smothering my subject.
With pen and pocket and fingers and eyes
I cipher meaning
Siphoning liquid beauty that seeps from the edges
Into a tiny vial;
Taking pains with my pain: it fruits sweetly.
If in this year’s ravaging I eke an ounce of beauty
It will outweigh all of your ashy remnant.
I can paste it on my footsoles
And stick me to the incinerated earth
Where I will wait for the rich loam
Tear soaked and fertile, to live.
That is what poets do, cancer.
Taken from Now I Lay Me Down to Fight by Katy Bowser Hutson. Copyright (c) 2023 by Katherine Jane Hutson. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com
About Katy Bowser Hutson
Katy Bowser Hutson is the author of Now I Lay Me Down to Fight and Little Prayer for Ordinary Days. She’s a founding member of Rain for Roots, Indelible Grace and co-creator of Coal Train Railroad. She’s recently had essays and poetry published by Ekstasis, Rabbit Room, Brighter, and Square Halo Books. Lately, she’s writing about play.