Peggy Shumaker is the Alaska State Writer Laureate.  Her lyrical memoir is Just Breathe Normally.  Her most recent book of poems is Gnawed Bones.  She lives in Fairbanks with her beloved Joe Usibelli, and they travel widely.  She teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop 

Shumaker says: "These poems grew from an Eco-Arts writing workshop I taught in Costa Rica.  They're part of a book called Genesis, Quetzal that will be published in Jan. 2013 by Red Hen Press."

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News That Stays News

by Peggy Shumaker

Reading to you somber news

from a friend whose overheated breast

may soon go its separate way, friend

begun planning her own death, organizing

for the rest of us the aftermath,

my voice closes in.  When I turn

your tears blur through mine

and we fall together gracefully as if

we’ve rehearsed these moves

we’ve been rehearsing since

we first drew breath. 

Calm then, our breathing,

and you notice, quietly,

“This is going to happen

more and more often, you know.” 

Yes.  This from the man whose scar’s

still sealing, bone still fusing,

after the surgeon opened his spine,

snipped off lamina and drove screws

into vertebrae, ground up

the cut-off bits, worked the grit into

bone morphogenetic protein

packed like putty around

anchors and rods to aid the body

rebuilding the backbone.

So you will walk without pain

a little while, your patched heart,

steel knees, cadaver-skin

rotator cuff pitching in,

your torsion-twisted

leg bones aiming each foot

in its own direction.

Each step one step

closer—each step

one step deeper.

          ~for my beloved Joe, on his 71^st birthday, Dec. 28, 2009