Poem: On being told I have prostate cancer (A love poem) by Albert N. Katz
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On being told I have prostate cancer (A love poem)
my first thoughts were of mechanical knives
inching off my life
in equal segments and then,
noisily, crashing to an end
and us together
no longer
ah Jeannette, if I could
I would shed my skin like a snake
segment by segment, inch by inch
and stand before you
fresh and new
to live as I like to think
we lived: celestial objects,
shining bright, running true, trailing luminous segments
circling in orbit around one another
year after year, but
cancer
with that stark word
I crashed, brutally reminded
we do not float above the flotsam below
impervious to the workings
that hatch in the muck
but you, love, you knew
that the real magic
lies in minglings of the touchable solid
messy world, fecund green,
fresh or gnarled yes even that,
old and sinewy, all governed by
the upward thrust seeking a space
in which to flower and rot and
grow again, entangled
together in whatever the unknowable brings, bound
as I am to you and you to me
After 43 years as a cognitive scientist, Albert N. Katz (he/him); retired from academia and started a new career as a writer of short stories and poetry. His stories and poems have appeared since in anthologies, genre-based (detective, horror, and science fiction) and literary magazines. His story, Hocus-Pocus, is a past winner of the Flash Fiction competition sponsored by Kansas City Voices/Whispering Prairie Press. His poem “Cracked Boulders” was one of the winners in the 2023 Polar Express Canadian National Poetry Contest and his poem “Along the Saint John River” was awarded a Special judges prize in the Canadian Drummond Poetry Competition (2024).
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