Online Books > Eve Coleman: Living, Dying and Cancer

My Second Winter

Even though some of these new poems were written in the same calendar year, they are part of what I metaphorically speak of as my "Second Winter"--sick again, another round of treatment, cold weather. My second "Watermelon Poem" speaks to how heartsick I felt and, in retrospect, was what I believe to be my intense longing for a death I did not care to spend months or possibly years waiting for:

The Second Winter

December 19, 1992

Summer came again

And just as quickly went.

The woolen socks

are back...

To stay

I think.

The watermelon shoes

Are put away

On a shelf I can

No longer reach.

Summer,

however brief,

May come again

This year.

But the shoes,

Too little worn

To Have Such

Saging soles,

Will walk about

No more.

But I am not, by nature, a gloomy or pessimistic person and within a few days, another poem came called, "A Glimmer of Hope":

A Glimmer of Hope

December 22, 1992

Okay, maybe,

Just maybe

I've been looking

at the shoes

all wrong.

Perhaps they're

Not worn out.

Perhaps once more

I can replace the

Heavy woolen socks

With watermelon shoes.

So what if the shoes

Are a little worse for wear.

Fading semicircles

are barely discernible

To the casual eye.

Few really look

Beneath to see

The worn out sole.

And those who do,

are content to see

A hint of what once was--

Bright green rind

Cushioning hot pint fruit.

Those who do

Look beneath the surface

Celebrate the sole below

Replete with rends and tears

It is for them,

Those who

Celebrate my soul

That I will drag

The well worn shoes

Around on wobbly legs

Until the cobblers tell me

They have sewn their last stitch.

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