Seven: The Women’s Poetry Salon, April 25th, 2009

Hobee's May 20, 2006

Saturday, I attended the women’s poetry potluck and Salon that I am a member of. It meets every six weeks or so, and people take turns hosting. The group consists of women in their 40s and 50s mostly. Among them, I am one of five whose partner or husband have had cancer. Two lost their husbands years ago; one remarried a few years back, while one recently remarried. Another shaved her head in solidarity with her husband’s chemo. He is doing fine after a second round of treatment. The other has recently started dating again after losing her husband years ago. It was she who hosted the salon.

She was a woman with thin blonde haired who I last saw at one other Salon, and who read erotic poetry. This time, she read a poem called “9 Types of Fog.” It told the story of the cancer her husband suffered and died from.

 I searched her out in the kitchen during the break. We stood near the stove in the cozy room, with walls inside painted a bright yellow, windows facing out to trees.

“What kind of cancer was it?” I asked.

“Colon. It came back after they tackled it, spread to his liver, killed him,” she said.

She explained that she had two sons, now outgrown the house, and so she lived here alone most of the time. She gave me names of two friends who had gone through colon cancer, with bags, both local.

You would never know from the outside of this humble house that so much went on. The yellow kitchen screamed bright cheerfulness. Tibetan Tonkas hung on the walls of the living room. 


As usual, we all read two poems aloud each, testifying of strength within, among copper statues of buddha and built-in bookcases. Eight years after her husband's death, she spoke in the poem of fog, how it infiltrates. And she told of how her son’s hamster, at the time, was preyed upon by the owl which flew by their windows—too close.

I wondered when life became ordinary again after that time in her life when the fog clung to empty webs.