a 𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐫

i know how you can help, she offers —

bring him kale from your lovely garden

i looked at the woodlice gathered there
tirelessly ravaging the sad little shoots,
stripping promise from the stem

i thought: what small defences we carry
against the things that fold us back into earth

i know that it will never grow in time
to nourish him

i want to tell her this

& never did.

^{Image by Benjamin Lizardo on Unsplash}

This poem is a memory. Years ago, when I asked how I could help a friend during her husband’s cancer journey, I was asked for kale from my garden to help with his health. I think they were juicing. Nourishment, of course, is important - it wasn't really a cure, but something that could help his body as it was ravaged by the disease. I felt paralysed by that request - it was a small, hopeful gesture and a way to offer something nourishing, but it wasn't a request I could fulfil. At the time, my garden had little to give, being only the start of Spring, and whilst I said I could, he died before mid Spring and the kale grew on without him, was eaten, died, and composted - the natural cycles went on. In some way he did too - bodies decay and rot, and are part of the same cycles the garden is subject to.

That silence stayed with me - the things unspoken, the things I never did, the inability of me to cope with it at the time. I felt like a terrible friend. This poem reflects on that quiet moment of wanting to help, but knowing there was nothing at all I could ever do. Loss is painful, slow, and grief can be long and drawn out. We are limited against fate. The woodlice, or slaters as we call them in Australia, busy with decay in the garden, is intended as a kind metaphor for the fragile shoots of hope and life, and the inevitable erosion of time and decay, and the tension between caring usefully and being absolutely helpless against it all.

I meant it to be a small meditation on the defenses we carry against death, and the things left unsaid, and how helpless we feel when someone is dying - but also regret. However, the softness of 'fold us back into the earth' and the reference to natural cycles of decay is meant to be more in recognition of natural cycles and that it's something I have realised very deeply into my being. We can't stop death, but we can find meaning in the fact it is part of the natural cycles of life.