Coming Round
Image created on Canva
~For Dorothea Lynch & Eugene Richards~
Ballistics were the first words heard —
Prognosis. Regimen.
Machines, tubes, pricks —
Those were extensions.
Now I am farther out.
Air comes round and it has been for quite awhile –
air as velvet puffs, air as trumpet blasts –
the brass, the platinum, the silver gold element
here in a garden beneath the moon and by an Oak.
Ginkgo, I pretend and dwell with elves,
polish pots, plant herbs. Redwood, I whisper
and the bark is a shout of one’s heart pounding.
This is sense then, in fact, all senses,
these winds, that tree, this cup where my palm
is suddenly the clearest report
of where my left breast was.
The scar tissue is sacred.
The heart’s metaphor bled
and still bleeds fear, the fear of being stalked.
But I walk with this as no prey
circling the depths that were carved.
For more works like this one, try these:
- The Enemy Within – Poetry on Breast Cancer
- My Favourite Carving, A Poetry Read – Self-Esteem and Inner Voice Poetry
- Self-Care for Chronic Illness – Positivity Corner Piece for Self-Care
- My Magical Pocket of Garden Beauty – Personal Essay on Creativity and Plants
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Stephen Mead
Stephen Mead, a mixed-media artist, first began seeing his poems published in little literary print magazines in his mid-twenties. In the late 1980s, he moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts, to focus more on visual work. Around 2000, making use of the internet, he began publishing his art and writing combined. Since then, in addition to his art being shown in physical gallery spaces, his poetry, essays, art, and hybrid-work have been published internationally in over one hundred print/online magazines and artistic platforms.
