All of Our Cells

Tomorrow is the last day for pre-publication orders of my forthcoming chapbook.  Have you ordered yours yet?  If not, go here to order your copy.  It will ship in June, and you'll have a lovely summer treat.

You may ask, why not wait to order until it's ready?  Because the press run is determined by how many books are ordered in this time period.  If the sales reach certain levels, more books are published, and since a second printing is unlikely, it would be great to make it to some of those higher levels.

Here's a poem to whet your appetite.  It first appeared in The Innisfree Poetry 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.

To see how this poem interacts with others, order my forthcoming chapbook, Life in the Holocene Extinction, here. You'll find other poems of consolation and hope, poems that explore what elements of modern life give us hope in the face of all the stresses and calamities we face both individually, as a culture, and as a planet.