Kia ora koutou, I started this poem some time in the early 2000s. I’d had radiology in 1998, the first time I had breast cancer. I came across it the other day and thought oh yes. Yes. I remember. At the time my granddaughter Abbie Marie worked in the radiology department. She didn’t do my treatment of course but I knew she was there somewhere, helping someone else. She doesn’t work there now but here’s to her and all the other radiation therapists who helped and still help walking this road just that little bit easier…
Linear One
(for Abbie Marie)
Sing, my girl, sing – over there is a smiling mask
for sad days, a solemn one for happy nights.
Wear them for all occasions, wear them for fun.
Sing of the large dome, its measured descent, of hands
stretched to grasp yours, of voices – unexpectedly sweet –
of the shadow that lingers at the end of the room.
Sing about death and faith and blood and the pathway
along which the full moon will come soft-slippered
to sip red-lipped wine from a bowl of thin glass.
Sing as you contemplate the masks that come and go
one for this, one for that. Give a man a mask, it is said,
and he will tell the truth – in the bunker we know better.
Renée
