Nana Ollerenshaw: Two Poems

The Encounter

The day the snake

flailed off the gutter

stood on its tail

weaving for holds

it distracted us

each from the other

and brought us closer,

you with the broom

jabbing it clear,

me at a distance,

lured and repelled

in love with its movement

its alien face

its perfect design.

It dropped and

poured behind the steps.

My mind absorbed

the prisms of its scales,

mosaic back,

its fear, repeated by my own.

We waited for the snakeman

barefoot with the casualness of one

who knows his snakes.

He plucked and bagged

the roiling coils,

those diamonds of malevolence

and you and I returned

to just another morning.
 

Chemo

Everyone is kind.

The sunlit space quiet.

Nurses smart in pin striped shirts and purple gloves

push trolleys with all the disposable medical supplies

of a Health System.

Patients lie or sit on chairs in bays.

Their plastic bags from intravenous poles

deliver hope.

Hope has names that tell them nothing:

Carboplatin, Platinol, Cytoxan, Taxol,

or only that a poison can be therapy.

Women push their poles along

in willie winkie caps,

hiding what is not polite.

Everyone is kind.

Windows show a world

that’s lost its relevance, for now?

Relevance is here, this side of glass

on thrones, where people are attended,

food is comfort

sleep is easy and a welcome pastime,

where lives are elemental and connected

but people really know

only their own burden

and struggle to break free.

Everyone is kind.

Nana Ollerenshaw