This surprised me. It’s not what I have been planning to write about. In fact, just last week I said I wouldn’t be writing a collection about cancer. Now, who knows.
Notes:
”Words, words, words.” is a quote from Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2.
A sentinel is a guard, but it is also something that indicates disease.
Yew tree needles are used to make a very common chemotherapy drug.
____________________
Ode on a Yew Tree
No one told me my veins would hurt
That my fingers would trace them along my left forearm
and where once there’d been a wash of blue,
there’d be smudged lines of black, like charcoal
No one told me that ever-after
tapping the flow of red cells and white cells
of plasma and platelets would be so god-damned hard
that I’d wonder if I had any life to spare
My body is a furnace now
stoked by needles, fueled by
the needles of yew trees,
burning indiscriminately.
Once the letters flowed from my left hand, flowing
into the next, and the next, to make “Words, words, words.”
Then a pause for breath.
The curved edge of my left hand
would smudge the blue ink like a slow-shutter image
of the invisible dance of that particular language.
And now, I try to learn to crochet, lying in the sick bed
when words, too, only come with the stabbing
of a hook that might catch one and drag it
into place, but
I have too few words for pain, discomfort, amputation
to arrange on a white sheet of paper.
Once upon a time, I studied croquis, capturing bodies
on white paper and avoiding setting defining lines at all costs
Soft charcoals, smudged edges, allow an artist to ease
one arbitrary body part into the next
with respect (and I mean this literally) for a whole.
There’s always a lesson in returning. The river is
familiar—the currents and the obstacles. But
the yew tree has changed me. It lines the banks
like dispassionate sentinels.
I wade in slowly
white paper in my right hand
languages in my left
(not yet published. ©Ren Powell . 2025) Image unsplash
Thank you for taking the time to read or listen. I’d love to hear your thoughts—I hope that you will share them in the comments on Substack, or join the discussion in the Dramatic Roots chat, where note sharing can be an act of literary citizenship. Post a link to your work, and share another.
I’ll be back later this week with a process journal essay. Until then, may your week be filled with good moments.
Warmly,
Ren
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