http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
Like many
men, I was terrified of getting prostate cancer in my later years. Shortly
after my 65th birthday, in the spring of 2011, I was, yes, diagnosed
with prostate cancer and began hormone therapy.
Although
I feel fine (most days) I have had some really weird dreams. The one on which
this poem is based was so vivid that I got out of bed in the early hours and
made a few notes before I could forget the whole thing. Sometimes I can get
back into my dreams, but not on this occasion. As soon as my head hit the
pillow again, I was fast asleep. If I had another dream, I don’t remember it.
I eventually
woke up around 7:00 am in a cold sweat, vaguely disturbed yet also oddly elated.
I felt as if I had ridden the gamut from youth to old age in a matter of
seconds and been washed up on a sunny beach, my trusty white steed and me. (I
love walking by the sea…)
Above a
louder and even more splendid than usual dawn chorus, I fancied someone was
calling a name. In the cold light of day, I couldn’t hear what name, but somehow knew it
wasn’t mine; not this time anyway.
I sat up
in bed and said aloud, ‘I have prostate cancer.’
Perhaps
that is what the dream was all about, giving my ‘illness’ a name so I needn’t
be afraid of it anymore?
Some
hours later I caught a train and soon found myself walking by the sea in
Brighton (East Sussex). I have done this so
many times for so many years, yet
those so familiar surroundings seemed
like something out of a dream that day, and I felt so much the more reassured for it.
Naming our fears helps us confront them, all the better to get on with living without being distracted by a sense of constantly doing battle with an invisible enemy.
ON THE
INCREDIBLE SELF-EMPOWERMENT OF NAMING
THINGS
I rode a pale horse to a castle of sand
gate left wide
open,
drawbridge down, so carried on
and
banged at the door,
noise
resounding like the weeping
of some
tortured wretch
No one
answered as I called a greeting
and the
door groaned ajar;
not a
friendly soul in sight, I entered
the Great
Hall where a banquet
called
for celebration of someone’s life
(alive or
dead?)
Trestle
tables were piled high with food
of every
description,
yet no
one ate from a single silver plate
or drank
from silver goblets;
every
throne-like chair remained emptier
than a
beggar’s pockets
My horse bucked and reared as if sensing
a curse
had been laid upon us;
I lost my
grip and tumbled to a stone floor
as cold
as an icy moat;
frantic,
I heard the wretch let fly my name,
among waves
of terror
I swam
centuries before finally recovering
my surfboard, soon lay panting
at the
gate of a sandcastle left wide open,
listening
to that wretch weeping,
wondering
who it it could be, how on earth
they knew my name
Suddenly, I saw him and it was like looking
in a mirror, an expression of misery
I could not bear so leapt into the saddle,
and rode out of the
gate, its legend
(C-A-N-C-E-R) less scary for connecting me
with a positive mindset
Copyright
R. N. Taber 2010; 2013
[Note: Regular blog readers will know that I have revised this poem several times. So why post it before I am happy with it? I suspect it has to do with my being too close to the subject. Whatever, email feedback has both prompted and shaped any revisions, for which I am grateful, and can only hope this latest will be the last. It only goes to show, I guess, that a poem is a 'live' art form in the sense that it is capable of metamorphosing as it passes from reader to reader and back to the poor poet who has to try and make sense of it all...]