The Next Step

John Fox led two three-hour workshops at Cancer Lifeline this week. He's absolutely terrific. If you get a chance to go to the one he's giving with Merna Hecht and Andy Himes tomorrow night, grab it. Titled Poems of Witness: Living with Heart in a Conflicted World, the interactive workshop will be at the University Friends Center from 7-9 pm. That's Wed night, the 15th.

One of the exercises we did today: "Commit your next step to what you love most dearly." After discussion, a free write. Here's mine:

The next step

is continuing on
with what has been --
holding you in the night,
watching your days
not surround your breath
with medical
negligence.

The next step
is more of the same --
figuring out ways
to bypass
the lack of hope
that permeates
a field of vision
that doesn’t
include
you.

John put together a useful booklet for us filled with Mary TallMountain, Rumi, Mary Oliver (Is there anyone who doesn't use Mary Oliver these days?, Mark Doty, Milosz, Hirsch, Walcott, Stafford and others. He also showed a marvelous and important film, Medicine and Poetry, one he helped develop with John Graham-Pole, a pediatric oncologyst from Shands Hospital at the University of Florida. Thanks John!