Gwyneth Barber Wood

Five days before her death, Gwyneth Barber Wood submitted several poems to The Gleaner's literary pages. We publish them, here and in coming weeks, by permission of her estate - Wayne Brown.

Surviving Survival

Like a stone sinking in a pond's widening silence,

the sinner in the confessional's averted gaze,

you await deliverance. The only sound's routine:

the shuffling leaves of a season gone awry.

All that you are is in your father's eyes.

In one village, a woman 'round thirty-two

has had her breast removed; shut out like Eve.

'Lawd God she wearing wig, look how she stay,

she mawger down-Yuh t'ink is obeah?!'

The hours drain like moonlight through a sieve.

The city wears a different mask, the alien gutted out.

You take your cup of poison as if it were the host,

count down the days you can't get out of bed,

count on the toilet bowl, become best friend.

Still, that's the easy part if you can make it past

the tears than never stop, at mid-afternoon

with the breeze stemmed like leaves, the pain

like the sun beating down on urban zinc, and streets

where gutters are the same, the chinks in stone.

The myriad stories of survival come.

Unlike a mother's shifting gaze or flesh

made memory - the hard, unswerving syllable

from childhood's store, only the list revised:

no fat, red meat, no booze, no cigarettes.

Now the altered sky, fire and fury dashed-

Gear down, low impact exercise, the family lane,

raw vegetables, nuts, green juice, fresh fruit.

Incredulous, they say you're looking great!

(Even without the temptress's mane).

Who knows perhaps the changing hand of fate!

Then the skeptic gurus, reasoning come late:

'Oh, you are on the five-year pills, then what;

did they not suggest removing your ovaries?'

Jesus, should they have taken my other breast,

my legs and arms in case some mole turns up?

No one tells you your dreams will change, the truth

about counting sheep, hope's interminable slur;

how morning's sighs become relief as you wake

then realize the bald head circling death

is not your own. Nothing about the blur,

that faceless sea that those who mean well share,

the list of friends and relatives beginning, Late ...

Know you are healed when a close friend calls,

how you looked ashen at some gallery affair,

and you think, O the inscrutable glare of art.

- Gwyneth Barber Wood