Poetry Tuesday: The Many Meanings of the Cell

Yesterday at work, I was talking to a colleague who is enduring treatment for cancer, on top of everything else we're doing at work.  He explained that a PET scan involves injecting the body with radioactive sugar, which finds the cancer.  On the scan, the cancer glows.  It was good to talk to him, in the early morning before the office suite got noisy.  It's scary to think of how many people I know who have cancer.

And then, more colleagues arrived and students--the phones began to ring, the phones on our desks, the phones in our pockets.

My life at work is so often noisy, and it makes me yearn for a vow of silence for us all--or some phone-free zones.  It also reminds me of a poem I wrote, "Lectio."  It first appeared in The Innisfree Poetry Journal, an online journal. 

I got the idea for this poem when I was at Mepkin Abbey. I read a brochure that asked us to consider turning our cell phones off--not just to vibrate, but completely off. The word cell leapt off the page, and I immediately thought of the biological definition. Since I was at an abbey, I also thought of the definition associated with monasteries and abbeys. This poem was one of those that came easily to me. Enjoy!

LECTIO

 

Some monk once said that we should return

to our cells, that our cells

would teach us everything we need to know. 

 

She thinks of that monk

every time a cell phone interrupts

her class, that jarring, reproduction

of a ring tone, the student's rush

to return to the hall to take a call,

leaving the class behind to try to gather

the fragments of their scattered attention

to return to the task at hand. 

 

She thinks of that monk

as she tries to declutter.

She chooses a different closet

each month.  She tries to be ruthless

as she sorts, but she lapses

into sentimentality and maudlin tears.  

 

She thinks of that monk

each month as she returns

to the doctor to do battle

against her own traitorous cells.

 

The doctor shows her scans of her invisible

insides.  She sees the clumps that will kill

her.  She thinks of terrorists plotting

their dark revenge, of a coven practicing

dark arts, of all the ways a cell

can go bad and destroy all it touches.  

 

She returns to the church lit by candles.

The smell of wax and chant

of Psalms sends her back to childhood,

that original cell, still so much to learn.