Into the Rumored Spring
by Joannie Stangeland

Description

Into the Rumored Spring is “a lyrical meditation on the illness and recovery of a dear friend facing breast cancer,” says Peter Pereira, a physician and the author of What’s Written on the Body, who provided comments for the book cover. “In these vivid, dreamlike poems Stangeland seamlessly weaves together the worlds of medicine, family, and nature—surgeries and radiation give way to the branches of trees, the movement of light on water, dreams of Venice, and the day to day gifts of family.”

All author proceeds will be donated to Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.

Excerpt:

This Is the Map

This is the scrap of blue that quilts the sky.
This is the spoon that rows the soup.

On a good day, she can hear the bees
already scouting for plenty.

On a good day, she can smell the grass,
the lilacs, the mint in her tea.

On a good day, nothing is too much
to hold, fold against her blankets,

brush into the coat of her dog.
This is the map she must follow,

a route of blue and red like roads,
like veins running through her.

The further she travels
from X-rays, their clotted ghosts,

the closer she knows this blue,
this bowl, this wind

that gossips with the birch leaves,
teases the water bright.