Chronic

I’ll just have to learn to live with it
said the specialist who casually diagnosed an illness
which he didn’t explain, which I had never heard of
but from which I had been suffering for years
and that maybe it was partly my own fault.

I shouldn’t have been so eager to live. 

Yet I refuse to believe 
that I am diminishing in value as I practice
in feeling gratitude for the body that always hurts.

On inconsolable November mornings, I look
at barren stalks guarding a harvested cornfield
like soldiers in line. Soulless survivors
of a war against an elusive enemy. 

They, too, stay strong.

(c) Leen Raats

This poem was first published in the Spring 2024 edition of Pleiades, in their special folio ‘On Disability’. Pleiades: Literature in Context is published twice a year by the University of Central Missouri and features work from both established and upcoming writers from around the world.