All Heart Matters

Poet Joan Baranow and her husband, Dr. David Watts have been engaged in collaborative projects on the power of healing through words for years. Joan Baranow’s poem, “Lumpectomy” was recently recognized as one of the winners (Honorable Mention) in a recently held Medicine & Metaphors writing event coordinated with support from the South Carolina Humanities Council and the Sumter County Cultural Commission.

Baranow, an English professor teaches at the Dominican University in San Rafael. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The Western Journal of Medicine and elsewhere.

She was a producer along with her husband and others of Healing Words: Poetry and Medicine, an inspiring program on the poetry of illness and recovery. From that site, the producers write, ” poetry serves to remind us of the spiritual mission of medicine.” In the more than 100 prose and poetry submissions received in our Medical Humanities event, I am more than convinced of the efficacy of metaphors in medicine.

Below is Joan’s poem.

Lumpectomy

by Joan Baranow

The moon is a little dented tonight
on the right side
where an arm would be
pressing,
and that’s natural
to the moon
as well as certain situations—
a word gets slivered off,
a cup chips its lip—
and accidents,
like standing up into
a harder substance
than your head.
Soon, though, the moon
regains her whole,
there’s repair
to blood and hair
where force
asserted its fact,
and bone builds
within its cracks
denser deposits.
Every form exhibits
the seams of what was
torn or taken or lost.
Lovely
the life left
with its stitches.
Even this night
tucked between granite peaks
receives from a surface
slightly skewed
a bruised
yet no less emphatic
radiance.