October 2009: Poetry by Rhoda Janzen The Last Cancer Poem I'll Ever WriteAzusa Street Revival
Los Angeles, 1906-1910
An inoperable tumor is
perfectly simple, like leaning
against the deck rail on one
of the last pleasant evenings
of the season. It is chilly, you
have a furry throw, someone
has braved a barbecue. Summer
is short here on Lake Allegan,
too late now for the ecstatic
loops of fireflies, skipcode
and hearts crossed like those kids
a century ago at Azusa, frantic
to capture shekinah glory in a jar.
Brother Seymour, the leader,
sat silent, head in a box, waiting
the Lord's direction. If Seymour
were here now, let's say on
a pontoon, and if he needed
to speak, the sound would carry
across the water, dreamy but
intact. On the lake one can't
hear from the land the way
one can from the water.
Nothing dies but the moon.
What follows the wake
of a dark pontoon? In piney
overhang a neighbor flips
the lid of a barbecue, and now
the eternal scent of summer--
the beulah box, the glory field.
Seymour tips the box like a hat
to the broken of back, to the
rheumy of joint, to the log and
the speck, and the glory comes
down. And the people are healed.
Rhoda Janzen, a former Perspectives poetry editor, is
the author of a memoir, Mennonite in a Little Black
Dress (Henry Holt, 2009), and a collection of poetry, Babel's
Stair (Word Press, 2006). She teaches English and
creative writing at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.
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