Love to you both did your dogs pick up the vibes?
P
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Max Richards
Sent: 08 February 2011 22:01
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: snap: lip
Lip
The weeks before her surgery
we talked over questions of feeling.
Me, born and bred in the old school
of the British stiff upper lip,
I seem to represent stoicism
to the point of repression.
If you don't let it out
soon it will shrivel up
and you will grimly survive
Œto fight another day¹.
She, an independent spirit,
resents the taboo on self-pity.
If the ordeal is painful,
let it be lived, explored
and expressed.
Her current test
was the skin cancer
on her face. Was the answer
the old stiff upper lip?
ŒWhat will be will be.
Grin and bear it.
Take it front-on like a man¹,
or in her case woman.
In this case the cancer
was one of the slow ones.
So long as the surgeon
removed every bad cell,
shifted from near her ear
a tiny circle of her own skin
grafted so it replicated
the delicate shape of the philtrum
between nose and lip -
after the bruising subsided
and the pain managed and gone,
there would be her former face,
smiling on the world smiling at her.
The days and nights before the surgery
were fraught with information
that spelled many dangers,
and imagination of more.
The day in hospital began with
hours of tedious waiting.
After, in the recovery room,
I saw her less battered than expected.
Numb around the area, tiny dressing,
sign of a dark stitch in the lip,
a long adhesive patch behind the ear.
A quiet voice expressing relief.
ŒI told the surgeon I trusted him.
The nurses were wonderful.
There is pain, and more di-gesic later.¹
The upper lip was stiff.
Max Richards
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