Harts of Lyme

My adult daughter has been fighting Lyme disease for eleven years now. Sometimes I need the emotional release that poetry and my pen provide.


Ranting Lyme-Take On Love-Hate

I love my daughter
with the dark eyes,
she draws you in.

I hate the chronic Lyme
within her blood and
bones and brain and....

I love this young woman
who grew beneath my heart;
set herself apart as she walks
beside me leaning sometimes,
sometimes leading me.

I hate those ticks.
Any Buddhist thoughts flew
out the window with that bite.
I dream of a fair fight, gloves on,
me and a giant ick tick---
Goin' down, clown!

I love her ancient gaze,
amazing grace at twenty-eight,
to embrace the snake laced
through her veins,
treatment in hard bites.

I hate the Bb bacteria,
corkscrew alien invader
jumps in a little cyst-ship
that has stealth settings
and an All-Access Pass.

I love the giving nature of my girl;
her world taken and shrunk
to a room, to a bed.
Instead of retreat, she reached;
never turned-down another
seeking help--reaching for a life-line,
thrown bed-to-bed through cyberspace.

I hate the Lyme-Fog Monster eating
her words and mine sometimes,
like the grown-ups in a Peanuts cartoon.
Oh, how I hate the wait for her to come
back to me; hate the decade spent in
hamster wheels with revolving doctors and
the company line that chronic Lyme was
all in the mind.
The truth is still our mantra.

I love my daughter.
This disease be good goddamned;
you can't have her!
Love and truth will win;
this is my daughter!