Cancer Survivor

Cancer came quietly, a subtle thief

In wait, lain for all those years

A downward spiral, a slow-falling leaf

To target the center of my fears

To target the eye of my major issues

The place where lessons take shape

Negative emotions hidden in tissue

Reveals truth without hope of escape

This, coupled with addictions of choice

Used by me in times of frustration

Growth now spreads this foreign voice

Whose presence increases my desperation

Why was tobacco used to cope

With the sorrows of a mundane life?

Or food used like a kind of dope

To get me through times of strife?

To leave faces of familiarity

Is not my longtime vision of now

Although I accept my mortality

There must be an answer, somehow

Could I pray for a quiet remission?

To give me a decent second chance?

And ask only for higher permission

For cancer to exit and me to enhance

The gifts of my life with a stronger heart

Based on all I belatedly understand

And walk the ways of a fresh start

The gifts of my life held firmly in hand

Then, through prayer plus action of power

Of equal intensity where cancer fed

Overrides the density where disease flowers

And bequeaths precious life instead

Though my understanding is most abstract

Of how this healing came to be

That miracles are possible is a fact

Of both scientific reasons and Divinity!

copyright 2009, Georgette Jones

*This poem was written two years ago, and is dedicated to all my friends who have beat cancer.  The painting, "Dreams of the Trinity" is in the permanent collection of Providence Hospital in Novi, Michigan.