The Year of Yes

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Vessel made by Beatrice Wood

My disappointment in the outcome felt like a hollow dirty blue plastic molded bed pan. I felt sick, like throwing up into it. After all, I had invested my time, energy and love into someone who was desperately hurting, and what happened thereafter? Within just a couple of weeks, we were right back where we started. I wanted to scoop her up in my arms and just let the bad things spin away from us.

Feeling thus the other morning, hugging my hand thrown pottery mug full of fresh hot coffee (not the chalice made by Beatrice Wood in the photo above), I opened Google Reader, scrolling down through the words and images miraculously appearing on my laptop screen from my friends' worlds. What a wonder.

And then there was a poem. Called The Year of Yes. I read, and the words released the sickness in me. Instead of throwing up, I cried - a cleansing sob. The ugly blue plastic morphed into a glazed earthen cup ready to be filled again.

Shaista wrote the poem and posted it at her blog Lupus in Flight. This is what she has written about herself in her About Me.

I live a meditative life in a green village in England. I was diagnosed with Lupus when I was 18 and much of my poetry writes itself in response to living with such a peculiar, demanding and life-altering illness. I write about love and longing and hope. I have lived half my life in India and the other half in England. I was born into two religions in a country of a myriad faiths. I have been writing since I can remember holding a pen, a crayon, paper, anything that comes to hand...

The illness Shaista lives with is "a chronic inflammatory disease that can affect various parts of the body, especially the skin, joints, blood, and kidneys," as the Lupus Foundation site says. I didn't know much about it until reading her blog posts, which sometimes talk about her regular hospitalizations for treatment.

Just from Shaista's blog title Lupus in Flight you understand how she lives with illness. Her story is about letting something from within her experience of incessant pain, ache and disruptive hospital treatments surface and be expressed in poetry. Well, her About Me above says it far better. Here is Shaista's poem.

The Year of Yes

- for Victoria and Perveen,
dearest, patient girlfriends
who nonetheless went off to Bury Farm
without me
and inspired this poem

I wish I had said Yes!

beloved

When you asked me out to walk

among the leaves

the turning leaves

You were offering me

the sound of dreams,

And I turned you down

politely.

Not today, I smiled

Perhaps,

Maybe, tomorrow?

But I wish I had said Yes!

beloved

I wish we had shared this light.

Next time don't ask

Just take me!

Order me to dress!

I am going to need your help

beloved

To begin the Year of Yes.
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