The Bridge at the Brink
Gazing across
to the Blackwattle debutantes,
sweeping twin steel-petticoats
over the satin bay, in awe
you ask Will I be grown-up
before their both skirts meet?
And I laugh, never dreaming
just how grown-up, at six,
life will dare ask you to be
when only days later, that bruising
bastard white-cell team
kicks your invincibility out
the kinder-window, over the bridge
and right to the brink.
Across a shuffle of cots, stretchers,
ravaged bedding, we topple
into first night on the ward
and as you drop from the trolley
you cry, cry hard because tonight
tonight we missed we missed Predator 2 on TV...
while the room reels on disbelief -
angry blinds, heart-torn kids' art,
flapping restlessly as lashed-down sails
and I drag the wailing curtain
around your bed
fail to find shelter
a nurse, resolute as a tugboat,
tows me to the bedding-room,
Oncology parents, she says
we're the lucky ones ...
score our own stretchers ...
While down on the bay
a bloody red moon
swings from the bridge
like a metronome
and taunting night holds sense
impossibly cantilevered
over the edge of the earth
Next day is driving home
across your drip-lines,
shadows cut the road
as if soft child flesh
and back in your playroom
my heart trips
on the slain aftermath
of last battle between
your bold Lego armies
Then slowly
kneeling my love
on your lonely Humphrey Bear rug
I gather fallen Lego men
place red knights upright
in brave rows
standing prepared to conquer
their lousy white-cell adversaries
And that night I steal the moon
as she hovers over the bridge
silver as an executive-toy reflected
upon God's glass-topped desk
bring her shining to your bed
Somehow, brave Teds,
You, me, the moon,
we're going to stare
that Great Divide in the face!
Yes, somehow
we'll BRIDGE it,
damn it.
by Jennifer Harrison - Poet
Everything in this poem is strong and uncompromising. From the nurse ‘resolute as a tugboat', to the child's distress at missing ‘Predator 2 on TV', the emotions and observations are immediate and vivid.
And isn't this how a parent might seize the day when faced with such a situation? They would pick up the toys and place the ‘knights upright in brave rows'. This is how poetry, too, aligns itself with and against cancer - in brave lines. The poem's wonderful lines, colloquial, yet they evoke unforgettably the emotions of a mother dealing with her child's cancer illness.
