Melinda's Cancer Poem by Herbert Nehrlich

The day that follows Christmas,
they took Melinda to the Phillippines.
Healers were known to heal and cure
without regard to medical convention.
That was, if you would have asked them,
the point of healing, and they truly had embraced
spiritual essence of all beings superhuman,
it was a blessing that the gods had only sent
to this small monastery in the Southern Sea,
the sick would pave an alley to the word of God.

Four midsize tumours were removed without ado,
a tiny effort if you look at the tall fee,
she was sent home at once, perhaps to be ahead
of the Grim Reaper, should he want to claim her now.

The thing recurred within a week of their return.
They went to Hulda who had promised them a cure.
And fourteen thousand heavy steps and dollars later,
she was as sick as she had ever been before.

So she was sick of being sick and sick to death,
of all those quacks who had the world at cruddy feet,
she vowed to follow what the doctor of her choice
suggested after he had spoken on the phone
to the oncologist who was both feared and loathed.

She spent her money as expected by the bucket,
and there was praise and talk of plaques in her own name,
and two administrative nurses came to chat
about a giant sign atop the cancer ward.

It seemed the name Melinda was, as such, okay,
and if one added a sweet sum to make it whole
there would be promise for the future, very close
a hundred grand would make her name immortal, too.