BEGINNING 4. Cacophony

BEGINNING

4. CACOPHONY

After diagnosis

Clara transferred to Royal Children’s Hospital

Cancer ward.

Fluorescent lights, 4 beds to a room

In each bed, like Clara

Child linked by arm vein

To tube, to blinking rhythmically beeping

IV drip machine and monitor.

This machine falters every now and then

Sends out a beeping alarm

Nurse bustles in

Presses buttons, checks number display

Smiles at child, says a word or two

Bustles out.

Each bed has overhead TV

On all the time, whether anyone’s watching

Or not. Visitors come and go

Usually a mother stays, weary, trying to be cheerful

We are high up, view out the window

Expanse of Melbourne

Attendant wheels in trolley with meals, snacks

Cleaner mops, sweeps

Nurse takes Clara’s blood pressure pulse breath

Extracts prick of blood, dispenses meds

Occasionally doctor sweeps in.

So busy bright bustling

(Remember I have just come from 12 days

silence, meditation,

Still, quiet countryside)

Blinking lights TV noise monitors drips

Cacophony!

How can anyone focus and heal here?

(Yet Clara seems content enough

Glad, I think, her weeks of feeling ill

have been recognized, explained

are being treated.)

3 July 2012

BEGINNING 3. All is Impermanent

BEGINNING

3. ALL IS IMPERMANENT

Just back

From 10 day meditation retreat;

Silence, calm, Buddhist teaching:

“All is impermanent”

When Clara asks me

“Dad, can you look at my neck,

Tell me what these lumps are?”

Look, feel,

Not anything I recognize

Tiny voice whispers inside

“Strange lumps = cancer.”

I dismiss this ridiculous notion.

“I don’t know Clara,

I’ll ask your mum.”

Next day Jill and Clara go to hospital,

I get a call

“We need to talk to the doctor, with you there.”

Get in car, drive

Horrible sinking dread.

All is impermanent.

2009

AFTER 23. How Many?

AFTER

23. HOW MANY?

A new acquaintance,

We chat, getting to know,

What do you do,

Where do you live,

And if the getting to know

Gets to knowing more,

It drifts to relationships, family

And, inevitably,

How many children do you have?

And, in this ambling conversation,

For the first time, I hesitate,

Consider honesty,

Two paths before me.

Path 1. We had four children.

And maybe it stops there, but what if it meanders on?

Well, the eldest is studying again,

Next lives in London, blah,

My son an apprentice, blah, blah

And Clara, the youngest... ah... she died.

Well, that’s a conversation stopper.

So then there must be

Oh, I’m sorry, how terrible!

It’s alright, yes terrible, but, blah, blah.

I would be wiser to take the other road.

Path 2. Three children,

Sophie is…, Rose is…, Sam is…

Blah blah

And don’t mention Clara,

Don’t mention the dead one.

And right there, there’s a little betrayal.

To save some awkwardness

I’m pretending she never existed.

Or, at least, I don’t mention her

And ache a little

That I’m leaving her out of my story.

So that is why,

Getting to know someone new,

At a certain point in the conversation

I hesitate.

19^th March 2013