1
You’re counseled
when waking to the quick of pain
distract yourself concentrate on breath
let Divine Will have its way with you
accept what you cannot mitigate ignore
or change
Emulate your father who refusing
mind-dulling medication
rushed his lunch his pace
rubbing his shoulder
where scar sawed across nerve
never uttering a word
a man accustomed to preaching
the Word
Consider Higher Mind
where night has no starlight
a black so deep
mind is lost to mind
Meditate on an ancient Text
stay still
like a mountain lake so far inland
no wind can disturb its surface
no force can break its rim
2
To live with chronic pain drains us
in its persistent assault
Nothing important can be done
or if done done at the risk of harm
to ourselves to others
Wounded the animal can’t be restrained
but turns against itself
or is it only humans who blunder onward
when one’s whole being yearns for retreat?
Are we blessed by narcotics
that dull body and mind?
Surely to live a lesser state does not suffice
Is there a way pain can be honed
to a keener point
to probe a nerve-cell spiraling
in another plane
where kinship and tenderness
can vanquish pain
3
When pain becomes mere memory of pain
to be calm is as easy as skin warming through glass
sunlight veiled by cloud passing then passing on
sustaining as the sound of Father’s pink-finned Oldsmobile
passing
might have sounded
Has it intonation? a sustained pulse?
an oceanswell still and still moving? above the chatter
a silence that is sound?
Hear it the way you hear your mother’s voice
the way it comes back
the smell of fresh-washed flesh her forearm
held by her left hand
her face turned slightly to the side and downward away
from whatever was too bright held in cloaked
an unspoken sense of inevitability
who never uttered what her heart held of pain
except when in a heartburst he left her
for mere eternity