This Is Just To Say

They have taken 

the scans
that were in
my care plan

and which
I was certainly
dreading
for weeks now

But bless me
they were amazing
so clear
and so NED.


Thanks to physician-poet William Carlos Williams (pictured here) for creating Every Poetry Teacher's classroom dream prompt for the instruction of imagery. And thanks to my care team at Tennessee Oncology, and to cancer researchers everywhere doing REAL SCIENCE right now, even in a social climate currently hostile to it.

For those who don't know it, here's a link to the WCW poem that inspired mine: This Is Just to Say

And, for those readers who'd like to know more about Williams, here's a link to a  biography/appreciation I found in, of all places, the Annals of Thoracic Surgery, while I was rummaging around for this picture of the poet, which accompanies the article. While there are lots of biographies of Williams floating around out there, I chose to share this one, written by another physician-scientist, Dr. Richard Carter, and published in 1999. Williams was himself primarily a pediatrician and obstetrician, so I'm not certain why a journal dedicated to thoracic surgery published this article about him unless it was for a thoracic oncology patient-poet like me to find for encouragement and inspiration some decades down the road. Even after being incapacitated by multiple strokes, Williams kept writing.

And what I mean to say most of all, is that I have been given the very fine gift of MORE TIME to be here with y'all, for which I am ever grateful.