Down at the Deep End / Poems & Drawings

This may be a secret among only a few of its recipients, but cancer is a direct and positive gift from God. Its chemo and radiation therapies wrack and ruin us. . . and its alternative therapies may bewilder us with the arcane and often whacky character of their methods. . . I chose the traditional medical program of three chemo and thirty-five radiation sessions, begun immediately after diagnosis of my cancer, and I praise Allah for the doctors who treated me with their medicine chest of tough love. _________________ Redemption happens the way/ water falls/ Forgiveness is air/ let into an airless room/ Even at the top of the highest peak/ we can't just step off into the sky/ At some point only God's Love has any reality/ and everything hangs enraptured from that ferocious hook/ Streams of light continue to enter us from we/ know now where/ The truth of our beings/ light streaming everywhere