recovery – The BeZine

BATH

Myra Schnieder

Kindness, an Irish lilt in her voice,

spares me the effort of running the water

and supports my elbow when, stripped

of everything but wound dressings,

I take a giant step into the tub.

Warm water wells into my crotch,

unlocks spine, lullabies stomach.

Is it because I’ve passed through

extremity that this comfort is intense

as the yellow daffodils trumpet?

Yesterday – my raw body stranded

by the basin, chill sprouting on my skin

while a Chinese student nurse

conscientiously dabbed each

helpless area – is miles away.

Dimly, I remember a stark room

and the high-sided saltwater bath

I was dipped in a few days

after giving birth. As Kindness

babies my back with a pink flannel

I’m reborn though maimed, ageing.

And this pool of bliss can no more

be explained than the song that pours

from a lark as it disappears into

stitchless blue, the seed circles

that cram a sunflower’s calyx,

day splashing crimsons

and apricot golds across the sky

before it seeps into the silence

of night, the way love fountains.

Photo credit ~ amazon preparing for a battle (Queen Antiop or Armed Venus), byPierre-Eugène-Emile Hébert 1860 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), public domain photograph via Wikipedia

Bath is an excerpt from:

Writing My Way Through Cancer Jessica Kingsley Publishers (2003), and

Multiplying The Moon Enitharmon (2004)

Editor’s note: The opening poems of Multiplying the Moon are Myra Schneider’s response to her experience of terrible illness. In the aftermath of fighting breast cancer, she found herself writing poems that explore transience, death, and survival from many different angles. The main theme of `Voicebox,’ the long fictional narrative in the middle of the book, is communication; the poem follows the connections and disconnections between its main characters. In a short poem sequence, the poet draws on findings from the 1901 census to re-create her father’s early life, and the understanding she gains helps her to feel a new closeness with him. This is united by the theme of investigation of the self and its relationship with the outside world.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Myra Schneider ~ was born in London in 1936 and grew up on the Firth of Clyde. She is the author of four poetry collections from Littlewood, three novels for children from Heinemann, and has three poetry collections published by Enitharmon: Exits, The Panic Bird and Insisting on Yellow. With John Killick she has written Writing for Self-Discovery (Vega, Chrysalis Books) which was re-published in 2002. Her book Writing My Way Through Cancer, was published by Jessica Kingsley in 2003. The book is her fleshed-out journal from the year 2000 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. It includes poem notes and poems and a section of therapeutic writing ideas.