The Death of Rachel Carson--April 14, 1964
by Donelle Dreese
(published in Canary, Spring, 2017)
The battle of living things against cancer began so long ago that its origin is lost in time.--Rachel Carson
It had spread to her liver.
She never read the last letter
from Dorothy, the one that said--
I have come to a great sense of peace about you.
She said for all at last return to the sea.
Then death came whale-bursting
into her life, metastasizing
stirring its cellular gravel.
Denial is a disorderly thief
and resistance turns water to lead
so she let the thing flow through her
plunged her tired arm into the mud
felt the cool, thick mercy
against her skin, waited for the clay pack
to reclaim her fingerprints
until pain became impossible.
Canary is a literary journal that publishes poems about the environment and nature, and--as the poem above shows--that category is very broad.
Rachel Carson is an icon, so I was happy to read a poem--as sad as it is--about her. I love how Dreese uses imagery from the natural world to describe Carson's decline due to her cancer. Her cancer, which started as breast cancer, was diagnosed in 1960.
The "Dorothy" of the poem is Dorothy Freeman, and you can click here for a short essay about their relationship and their letters. The poet weaves just two phrases from a letter into her poem--two short phrases--but they speak volumes. The second phrase mentions the sea, and that leads to my favorite image in this poem: "Then death came whale-bursting/into her life."
"Whale-bursting"--using that image for a fatal diagnosis is not just brilliant--I literally feel it physically each time I read it! It perfectly captures the shocking punch of such a diagnosis, which anyone with cancer (and those of us who have lost people to cancer) can attest.
The rest of the poem mixes the clinical with the natural world, which seems very much in keeping with how Carson saw life.
The last line is another brutal blow: "until pain became impossible." It is difficult, when one is not experiencing horrible pain, to imagine how it feels. Cancer, as well as many other diseases, and especially during this time period and prior to it, makes one understand what is meant by impossible pain.
If you have never read anything by and/or about Rachel Carson, I hope this wonderful poem is a gateway for you. And check out Canary for more nature-inspired work.
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