Long, wide turn

Dana again here, typing for John this time. His words:

I’m still in the hospital, it’s Saturday morning. I got here yesterday after an exciting morning, especially for the neighborhood kids getting on the bus as the fire truck and ambulance responded to Dana’s 911 call. Slight fever and chills. Nothing new really, just a reaction to the chemo and a little longer nadir than I had hoped for.

Since my WBCs are at .1 we are really holding back on visitors and since I can’t talk without pain, I’m not really answering the phone, so I am isolated. What else is there to say? Thank you for all your support. Today I will leave you with a poem I wish I’d written because it made Dana cry when she read it to me. It’s from the Writer’s Almanac.

Blackbirds
by Julie Cadwallader Staub

I am 52 years old, and have spent
truly the better part
of my life out-of-doors
but yesterday I heard a new sound above my head
a rustling, ruffling quietness in the spring air

and when I turned my face upward
I saw a flock of blackbirds
rounding a curve I didn't know was there
and the sound was simply all those wings
just feathers against air, against gravity
and such a beautiful winning
the whole flock taking a long, wide turn
as if of one body and one mind.

How do they do that?

Oh if we lived only in human society
with its cruelty and fear
its apathy and exhaustion
what a puny existence that would be

but instead we live and move and have our being
here, in this curving and soaring world
so that when, every now and then, mercy and tenderness triumph in our lives
and when, even more rarely, we manage to unite and move together
toward a common good,

and can think to ourselves:

ah yes, this is how it's meant to be.