Philip Terman: All Her Life
Philip Terman?—you don’t know me.
I’m Patricia Lamb, Palliative care nurse.
Do you know what that means?
I work with patients who are dying.
And I received an odd request. You know
when some are dying they get a last wish?
Well this woman’s last wish—
I hope you don’t mind this strange call—
is—all her life she’s written poetry.
And now, her cancer has spread,
and she always wanted to know—I hope
you don’t mind—from someone—
I got your number from the university—
I asked about someone who could judge
what was good poetry—
and they gave me your number—
if her poetry is good.
If she would have been a real poet.
We’ll be moving her into hospice soon.
Might you mind looking at a few—
just a few—poems and tell her
if you think she was good enough?
That she would have made a good poet?
This morning she showed me a picture
she drew—many years ago, she said—
of a child—perhaps it was her?—writing
in the center of a round table
before a bouquet of flowers —roses I think—
That was what she’d have wanted
for the cover if she ever was able to have
a book of her own. A book of her own.
I remember her saying and then her face flushed
a little, and her eyes looked away.
So will you look at them
and let her know if she was a good poet?
It would mean so much to her.
Author’s note: This poem is based on an actual phone call I received from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Copyright 2017 Philip Terman.
So touching! And I can so relate. I had my first book of poetry accepted a year ago, at age 67, a month before surgery for bladder cancer. What a light in the darkness!
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Raw and poignant rendering, thank you for capturing this moment. It absolutely gutted me.
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The poem opens the debate.. Is literature a copy of the reality or it makes it up. The balance is not a function of literature, creativity is a radical action. So we are back to the same old new question, where does poetry end and where dos reality start from.
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