This week’s poem, about the strange things that happen in life, and how hard it can be to see our own role in them, how different things appear when looking backwards, and how we make up stories to explain events once we have the advantage of hindsight.

Fate

In the end it’s chance and energy

With their intertwining chemistry

All the rest is just my human search for sense

How the wind blows, who is where

What’s when, all the whys are something I invent

Time moves forward while my truths flail far behind

When my understanding has no base

Just the fantasies of our human race

Made-up truths and convoluted fairy-tales

Can be hard to face the randomness

With our cortex tuned to making sense

So I write some narrative I understand

Hawkins holes, big bangs in empty space

May be truths we find it hard to face

But belief in magic will not set me free

Kampala 2018

Today’s poem celebrates that one year has passed since my son went through a bone-marrow transplant. A long and trying year, that gradually got better, and though the journey is far from over, today marks a vital mile-stone.

To the Bone

Bone marrow one year old today!

A lot to be grateful for.

Here’s thanks to doctors and nurses,

Scientists and hygienists, researchers,

Generations of tax payers,

Politicians who took risks,

Radiologists and oncologists

Pushing boundaries.

Nature and humankind,

Stunning capacities of blood,

Science that developed drugs

To treat errors in genes.

To the young man who donated,

To the brave one who lived through it.

Today I celebrate you all.

Kampala 2018