The Geese (Jorie Graham)

cycle 5, treatment #2


posted by Lissa mcKinley on Friday, November 6, 2009 Edit





I wrote this yesterday, Thursday, but the UH internet was down!



I’m sitting in my usual spot staring out at the immobile steam engine this morning. The wind is whipping up the coverings of all the deep holes I look out over. I think this chemo is beginning to make me persistently tired and crotchety. I have a bit of neuropathy now too so that my fingernails and toenails are incredibly sore….weird and very unpleasant. This also affects my taste buds so that things don’t taste right—and I’m whining because I don’t like any of this at all! Ok, now I feel a little better.



I see from this window a small tree tucked into the buildings, and it still has some of its very red leaves with a little patch of green grass underneath it. It is a lovely little blaze of color in the grey world around it. . Chip is off to Germany this weekend, the kids are done with Fall sports and are enjoying some freer afternoon time, and I’ve found that naps on the 3rd floor are a joy in the early afternoon as I can just see the sun slide down over the top of the reddish yellow leaves of the tall maple out the little window—very cosy and nice. I’ve now read The Help, Cutting for Stone, and am deep into Edgar Sawtelle in the last 2 weeks. I would recommend them all highly!



We had a tough day all around THursday with post-chemo tiredness and movers bringing stuff from Chip’s mother’s place and utter chaos. Thank goodness Chip was home because I might have gone out the window—but, it is better this fine Friday morning, and although we have chaos in every room, there is a glimmer of a plan.



My friend Dan sent me this poem about days like today. Hope you like it:



The Geese By Jorie Graham





Today as I hang out the wash I see them again, a code

as urgent as elegant,

tapering with goals.

For days they have been crossing. We live beneath these geese



as if beneath the passage of time, or a most perfect heading.

Sometimes I fear their relevance.

Closest at hand,

between the lines,



the spiders imitate the paths the geese won't stray from,

imitate them endlessly to no avail:

things will not remain connected,

will not heal,



and the world thickens with texture instead of history,

texture instead of place.

Yet the small fear of the spiders

binds and binds



the pins to the lines, the lines to the eaves, to the pincushion bush,

as if, at any time, things could fall further apart

and nothing could help them

recover their meaning. And if these spiders had their way,



chainlink over the visible world,

would we be in or out? I turn to go back in.

There is a feeling the body gives the mind

of having missed something, a bedrock poverty, like falling



without the sense that you are passing through the one world,

that you could reach another

anytime. Instead the real

is crossing you,



your body an arrival

you know is false but can't outrun. And somewhere in between

these geese forever entering and

these spiders turning back,



this astonishing delay, the everyday, takes place.