Week 5
Poem 2 by Ken Arnold
August 14, 2013
Little sleep for me last night after 3rd chemo treatment. The steroids keep my wired at the same time the fatigue sets in to create a tug of war pull from both directions. No amount of sleep aid seemed to help so I simply got up and wrote for the blog. I know my vision will blur, the fatigue and nausea worsen and possilbe pain set in over the next days so I do it when I have energy regardless of the time. 1am and 3:30AM last night. Ken Arnolds’s 2nd poem in a series called “Finding Beauty in Kimberli’ also helped. Yesterday we learned that my friend Ken’s prostate cancer has spread to a tumor surrounding his liver. He goes back into chemo next week. My other friend, Terrill Collier, is living with cancer as well and entered in again this week. We’ll have a little team of some sort now. A clever name for this team I can share with them would be appreciated. An artist, a poet and a tree guy all in chemo. What would you call us?
Finding Beauty in Kimberli
Once when she went
out to play with her friends
on the kind of day
when it rains, as it will,
and her long red hair
began to frizz
and then was gone,
its roseate beauty fled,
such splendid hair,
and the rain carried
her hair to sea, her spangled
hair, where it became
an island and her friends
went there, to the island
of her hair, to play
in the tropical sun,
in her vermillion,
and she didn’t mind.
Her friends adored
her bald remains, if you can
say what’s gone remains.
You can. Consider
how cherry blossoms
are born to fall.