National Poetry Month

Poem for the Day

HIGH OCTANE COURAGE

                    At  I-95 Cloverdale exit in Winston-Salem is a Shell station.

                        On the hill above is Bowman Gray School of Medicine.

                        On the third floor are cubicles where cancer patients sit

                        for long hours of chemo as plastic pouches of medicine

                       nerve-wrackingly, slowly drip down long tubes

                       pumping rituxan and doxorubicin and bleomycin

                       into veins breathlessly waiting for a cure.

                        Out the broad expense of windows

is a red sign over the Shell station:

                        GET WELL SOON

                        Wearing a cap autographed by his friends,

                        attached to a tangle of tubes and bags

and plugged into a port, my son, age 22,

looks out the window

toward the Chevy Lumina in the parking lot

breathlessly wishing to be on the road.

Carolyn York