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Poem of the Week
A friend’s sage advice:
Just do what you can do
on a given day.
So on days I can’t pray
or pick up the phone
I send a poem.
Poem of the Weak,
I once accidentally called it.
I’ve sent Carver, Frost
Sarton, Levertov
Pastan, Olds and others—
my emissaries
my cloud of witnesses.
Let these poets earn their keep.
Let them speak for me.
Let them enter the house
haunted by illness.
Let them open the doors
shut against fear.
For in trouble
the poem is strong medicine
like the wind that blows
where it wills,
like the serpent of brass
set upon a pole
in the wilderness.
Veneta Masson
Printed with permission of the author. This poem originally appeared in The Cancer Poetry Project: Poems by Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them, edited by Karin B. Miller.
Literature & Medicine has received major support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.