Don Winslow Poems

The ripple swells, a wave is building.
I wait, standing in the warm ocean.
I feel the energy nearing me— growing, bulging
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With every Biopsy, a part of me dies,
A part of my body, a part of my spirit,
Like a rock beaten down by the constant drip-drip of water,
Slowly, surely, wearing, gnawing.
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Last year’s garden was bleak,
A few annuals were all she could do,
Mammograms and Mastectomies, Radiation and Reconstruction,
They took up most of her time.
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He sat at the head of the Thanksgiving Day table,
Head down, staring at-nothing.
Words of conversation slipping and sliding past him,
He heard not the sounds, he heeded not the words.
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Shells, broken shells- everywhere,
On boardwalks, parking lots, crunching, crackling underfoot!
Poor Mercenaria Mercenaria, what happened to you?
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I stand on a barren, ravaged, plain of pain
Isolated on this tortured mesa of malignancy.
Here, far from the world of normalcy
I search for a place of solace, a place of consolation.
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One is shiny, the other is dull.
One is streamlined and smooth, the other is blunt and chunky.
Their names tell all—Silversides and Mummichog, aristocrat and commoner.
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Why was I writing my 1961 thesis on the Antoine Equation when I could have been writing poetry like my 2005, “What is Love”?
Because I didn’t know that this Caterpillar could fly.

Why was I writing a 1975 Patent Application on “Novel Copolymers” when I could have been writing poetry like my 2006, “Why is the Rhyme so Sublime”?
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