silence

..is golden sometimes.
adjusting to the news of Friday has left us silent
a lot of thinking
about survival and its costs
its benefits
its adjustments and its demands.

besides a busy agenda of work and avoidance
silence has changed the landscape as
there is a big long whistling corridor called the future
that is hard to people, to focus or grasp

tony is dreaming again, this time of piles of multiplying powders
like the starry night talc heaved into his right lung to let it breathe
during the biopsy
like the cancer that keeps piling up in the pleura

and we got the date today
28 february for the surgery at ucla
many tests and measurements
documents and assurances between now and then
legal, medical , spiritual

about ten days in the hospital they say
to wait til the lung no longer leaks
and can hold the air that bellows it
and then home to rest and heal some more
and then we shall see
how the body withstands and the spirit fulfils the task.

it is no small thing to contemplate any future
but one uncertain and mixed with reality
has all sorts of colors,
no need for pollyanna and her "glad game"
we can find much to be happy about

but it's those lurking rainbow prisms
that shed surprising light and color
that hold the most interesting of gifts

garish in their promise
translucent perhaps
or channeling light into laser
digging in, raw

just what part of the reality sandwich shall we land in.
is not quite clear
we have to listen to the silence along with the bruiting ballyhoo
and continue our marigold journey.

i like to think of the hands of the surgeon.
in the photos you can see his hands coaxing tumor off lung
cajoling it to peel itself back and away from healthy meat-
i like the way his hand looks in that picture, holding
the heart of the man he promised to save
strong like the sculptor, feeling the tissue for a clue to its release
like Michaelangelo did with angels from their slab.

remember walking thru that gallery in florence and seeing the way life grew from rock?
i remember that.
let's remember that.