Coronavirus & Cancer March 2020. A pantoum by Deirdre McKernan Crosby

Fear, fright, nowhere to run, to take flight
Look into self for courage and strength
No place to go, to hide, day or night
Social distancing, two meters minimum length

Look into self for courage and strength
We’re all in it together while living apart
Social distancing, two meters minimum length
Persistent anxiety, swift beats my aching heart

We’re all in it together while living apart
A cancer diagnosis turns my world upside down
Persistent anxiety, swift beats of my aching heart
Calling up all my resilience, its surgery countdown

A cancer diagnosis turns my world upside down.
World news of dying, of palpable human plight
Calling up all my resilience, its surgery countdown
Fear, fright, nowhere to run, to take flight

…………..

Deirdre McKernan Crosby Deirdre is new to writing having joined a creative writer’s group in her new home town of Greystones, Co. Wicklow in early 2018. The group formed under the auspices of Greystones Cancer Support. Her first published poem, Uninvited Guest which appeared in the Bray Arts Journal in 2019 arose from a prompt given during one of the first sessions she attended. The title resonated with her first cancer diagnosis in 2014. Deirdre wrote In Memory of my Father (after Kavanagh), published in the Boyne Berries Literary Journal in 2019. This deeply personal poem draws from life changing events and occurrences in 60s suburban Dublin. She has been accepted for publication of two poems in The Blue Nib literary journal, Issue 41, April 2020. A sense of humour and resilience also reverberates in her present day writing. A trained Tutor, she enjoys the challenges of learning new skills and the promise of new works spilling onto a blank page. She continues to enjoy the discoveries of writing while recovering from breast cancer surgery, in March, 2020.