a letter, written in response to a facebook post from Ken Zabriskie 12/28/2019


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joey_Feek
She lost her battle with cancer about the time wife won hers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcpjSMmWUDw&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR04W5WItn3ygHTmI5PdIjFEvPtRy0DYA8vMYwecB2ZSopVMWxRqvmeI4dY

Kenny

In the spring of 2015, I nearly lost my bride to gastric cancer.  She had this cancer most of our married life.  Gastric cancer, in our case, was a slow burner.  It took nearly 20 years to catch fire.  When I would question my wife about its progress, she assured me it was not a problem, their became a time when she came to me and said it was now a problem.  She had been given six months to live.  She chose no chemotherapy or x-ray treatments.  She wanted to keep this private in our family.   To use this time to build memories for her children to carry the remainder of their days.  I was filled with anger and rage and shame.  So many confusing thoughts and memories. The comfort God offered me, was the poetry. This is a gift I adore yet never desired to form.

I feel the pain and suffering and joy in your post.  I wonder what gifts God has given with you as you have traveled this journey and felt this pain.  I don’t think God gave my wife cancer to develop my poetry.  I could not worship a God who was so cruel.  I feel that he offered me this give a gift, to help support, my journey.  I nearly ended my life one day when the pain was too much.  I am glad I did not and I see the joy my wife and I know enjoy with her recovery.

You may ask how this cure was possible and I have no explanation.  Like the miracle of Jesus curing a man blindness with mud, her cancer was cured with an herbal recipe, that has never worked since.  But this I am grateful for, her health and the gift of the poetry.

May I then share this poem with you about the experience, in hope that you may discover the gifts god offered you with your longing a desire to be the ones who are gone.

http://www.mymuzes.org/2019/10/the-gardener-and-cure.html

On the creation of poetry

So, what we must do then,
to create poetry?

Milton lost three wives, a Kingdom and a Republic.
Eugene England received a letter from Bruce R. McConkie,
the whole world read, while still in the post.
Carolyn Lynne Pearson lost her covenant partner to love and AIDs. 
I nearly lost my wife, due to gastric cancer.

Can one desire to be a poet?

Is poetry like a seed, resting in your soul?
Mine would never have come forth but to battle with my shame,
and the possible loss of my wife.

How then do two great suns grow brighter and their orbits wider,
as they strengthen their relationship?

Tobe and influence those, in their orbital sphere.

When away I think nothing but of her.
When together I fear the loss of the connection, with her.

This then the one I have no commonalities with is the very center of my soul.

Then this remains the question, how to strengthen this bond,
as we grow brighter, and our orbits increase?

Is it then the task, of poetry?

The first poets, in Israel, became the prophets.
The psalms then they sang, and wrote, and prayed.

How then now, to be a poet and a prophet, as in ancient Israel.
This, then to be family-centered and church-supported.

In the end, all I have are the children, 
and the wife, and the memories, 
we then create, anew.

This then I am told “Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; 
out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.”
William Butler Yeats.

Poetry history love and shame

What of the stories and the poetry

Once when love was young, one child he had.
This then one young child.

He wanted her to know the stories,
the ones that made, him and her and them.

He prepared the journals, the ones he kept
and honored and adored.

He copied and typed and edited,
with plenty of footnotes, like he had learned in school.

As he read and reread them he feared them.
There was no love there, between the pages, of the journals.

He had spent so many years learning to love and to live and to forgive.
One hundred years from now the grandchildren would read,
the carefully crafted, and footnoted and spelling checked journals,
where love was not noted within?

He put them carefully away for another day.

Twenty years later cancer came back, like a raging storm.
She had promised him that it was not a big deal, she lied,
it was a big deal.

Six months, they had left, maybe less.
How then to live a life without her?

The gardener was busy, working in the garage, to find a solution.
He was working two jobs, to fund the solution.

He was filled with anger, and shame, and regret.
The gardener and his wife and children were enjoying a campfire.

Theirs was no longer a world of his, so then came the poem.

You see poetry was never a gift, he adored.
Yet you ask, what of John Milton, Carol Lynn Pearson, and Eugene England.
These then were the exception.

What then makes him see himself as a poet?

The pain and anger and guilt and shame must go somewhere.
The toxic levels of fear and regret,
these must go if only to survive another day, so the poem came.

At first, they were not good, he dared not share the guilt and shame.
Like puss from a great wound, it sprinkled forth, to release the pain.

You see poetry, like life, remains unfinished.
The story to be completed by the reader.
The love, the hate, the anger, the shame,
become a shared story with the reader.

No carefully crafted footnotes, no carefully researched and accurate history,
just the guilt and love and hate and shame splattered on the page.

One hundred years from now, when you read the stories, I hope you feel,
the love and adoration and lessons,
he learned, from the poetry.

Ode to the Poem

You are like a tiny seedling from a mighty pine tree, sitting fallow for years, on the forest floor, waiting for that majestic fire to set it you free.

I wonder where you come from, little poem. This piece of magic, this gift from God.  You sat silent, for years at the center of my soul, bursting forth at that great fire, then at the coming death of the one I love and adore.

You were the first one to come to me, I never longed for you, as I longed for the birth of my children. Yet here you are, my first creation. I was sitting on the back porch of our home when you first came to me. The family was sitting in the back, around the fire. Enjoying a laugh or two. I struggled to see how I fit, into their world.  Always at work was I, seeking the funds to keep us afloat.

The Gardner was returning joy to the ones, who's laughter I had not heard, in years. It was good to hear her laugh. Cancer would consume her soon but the children would be left with the memories from the Gardner.  He had come to bring the cure, but joy supplied him also.

You came with your gift. Laying fallow at the center of my soul.  It consoled me, supplied the strength to continue.  Years it would take to find my place, in their lives again.  The anger and guilt and shame came out in the poetry. First to Facebook and then to select close friends.  Then to the one, I loved. This then to return to intimacy long lost. I am thankful for your gift of poetry.

The gift God gave my children

Sterility, the gift God gave my children

What is the gift God is giving my children?

Once when our marriage was young,

My wife asked me to help her to make a baby,

At this task I failed, though many times I tried.

This left and the empty spot, in my soul.

This left a drive to serve to restore.

Children came into and nestled, in this space,

For a while. 

Three have remained, and I serve them well.

Still, I ask myself, what of the children,

If we had created our own.

I shy away from this question now,

I shudder to think of what their life could have been,

If I were not sterile.

I still feel the drive to create.

This poetry then fills this space.

This and the children will be sufficient, for now.

Maybe in the eternities, Bonnie and I will create more.

But for now, I have the children, and poetry.

This blesses us now.