Like a small burrowing animal,
Safe in its cozy earth home,
Feeling the first tremor, my heart pounds.
Hearing the roar of approaching doom,
Time slows and only terror remains,
Forming a hard lump in my throat,
Girdling my belly like steel.
Not know what is coming,
Unable to flee or fight,
I wait.
Knowing only the inevitability of change.
This poem introduces chapter one of my memoir about lymphoma. It wasn't a mack truck or a grizzly bear that scared me. It was a just a lump of flesh at the base of my neck. Of course that "first tremor" isn't the end of the story. I like to put this poem with "Transformation", which you can read on my September 24, 2010, blog, or in chapter fifteen of my book. Fearful events, such the storms in Missouri last weekend are not the end of the story. How timely the Easter season is, to remind us that calamities precede transformation.
A free book excerpt is at http://booklocker.com/books/5100.html.
