Dan and his wife had an apartment in downtown NYC when 9/11 occurred. 14 years later, both he and his wife were diagnosed with cancer one after the other. Dan chronicles this painful experience in his own personal poetry collection. IHadCancer has received permission to publish one of these poems for our community, we hope you resonate with his words.
83
In the vision
our child is
a woman
gazing across
a cozy table
at me
some locale
holy to us
like Carmel
sometime sleepy
like mid-
afternoon in this
courtyard with leaves
glinting the season
shouldn’t matter
but it does
matter that
I am being
looked after
with quizzical
aggravation and
affection
I am certain
I am pleased
she contains
our features
commingling
her hair like
her mother’s
copper curling
like my hair
used to like
our allusive
conversation
foundering on
the mundane
Her mother
with any luck is
running late
Our daughter
wears a dress of
Marian blue
a healer
from birth
she is why
we are here
simply sharing
a meal
This poem & others can be found in Our Cancers: A Chronicle in Poems by Dan O'Brien (Acre Press, 2021). Photo courtesy of author.
Dan O’Brien is a poet, playwright, and nonfiction writer. His most recent books are Survivor’s Notebook: Poems (Acre Books) and From Scarsdale: A Childhood (Dalkey Archive Press), both published in 2023. He lives in Los Angeles. You can find him at www.danobrien.org.