I'm cheering for you, Tim!

Me too, Tim!

Nemo

Me as well.

I'm so glad to hear of your recovery, Tim. I too have had major surgery this past year and a long stay in an ICU after it was discovered there was a problem – a big one. My prayers are with you.

Update. Tim has put aside his walker in favor of a cane! :) Radiation starts Wednesday for 20 days (except week-ends).

Tim also revised his sonnet, "I Tracked the Marshes". It's now a double sonnet, "Requited", which he would like to share with you all.

Requited



I.
I've never feared I might not live till Spring
which seems so far away in February,
winter this year so long that it is scary.
Lord, how I long to see the geese take wing
from corn stubble where snow drifts disappear,
to witness the first greening of the grass.
This year for me that might not come to pass.
Thankful I have a Higher Power to steer
my future, I take one day at a time,
write this diary, read my daily psalm
in Sullivan translation. How they calm
a hunter who so long aspired to climb
over this prairie where I sank my roots
and tracked the marshes with my muddy boots.

II.
A month from now I hope my leg will heal
sufficiently for me to hit the brake,
snow drifts will swiftly dwindle. I shall take
a long drive to the fields where snowgeese wheel
bound for the Arctic like the natural force
they are, where far aloft the sandhill cranes
will cry kuk kuk, presaging April’s rains.
From every hillock rivulets will course.
I shall seek quiet refuge where the Jim
River dreams of the Gulf of Mexico,
bearing its freight of soil and melted snow.
The spring goose season never was for Tim,
so I won’t hunt. The hope to which I’ve clung
will be requited if I greet their young.

Pulling for you, Tim. That new second stanza sings!

I agree with Michael: the second stanza is very effective. Your writing powers are strong. May you be so, too.

Susan

I love that double sonnet, Tim. I’m glad to hear that you are recovering satisfactorily from the recent surgery, and I hope your experimental treatments go as well for you as possible. I, too, am cheering for you.

Martin

Another one here in the cheering section. I’m sad to see this dark news, Tim, but also inspired by your spirited approach to it, including the fine poems. I especially enjoyed those Commonweal pieces for Alan. Blessings and best wishes to you for the upcoming therapy. May your spirit and body confound the odds and prognosis.

Yes, these are fine sonnets. The spirit takes flight, and the body follows after. I am wishing you a full and speedy recovery from this adversity.

John

Good to hear the treatment is going well and you're still writing. Stay strong.

Dear Spherians,

Tim's PET scan earlier this week revealed that the cancer has further metastasized.

He'll soon begin clinical trials in immunotherapy.

Please continue to keep Tim in your thoughts and prayers.

Cathy

I will.

John

Thinking of you Tim. Val and I will never forget that wonderful night on the deck at Plum Island, when you recited long passages of your and Alan's Beowulf by heart, stamping a stave (well, maybe it was a broom handle) into the deck to help the rhythm; and Alan woke early the next morning to walk the beach and greet the sun. It was one of my favorite poetry experiences. You brought the words alive, as you always do.

We've been friends a long time and I've seen you survive a great deal. My money's on Tim again. And my prayers.

Love you, Timmy.

An Old Man Speaks

You haven’t found me frothing on the floor
and bleeding from the tongue for a long time.
You are my weekly visitor. The door
creaks open, and a corpse dusted with lime
revives to smile. Danny, had I been straight,
I might be you, smothered in happiness,
children swarming my knees. But I’ve a fate,
Dom in the Anglo Saxon, and I’d guess
the All Father has placed me on this path
diverging in a leafless wood, to find
some way to charity, away from wrath.
My eyes are bandaged, so I’m choosing blind
between two destinations: Heaven, Hell.
Visit me here, and try to love me well.

—Timothy Murphy

Thank you Mary, and Michael, many fond memories of Plum Island. I've reluctantly given up my hopes to visit again this summer. At 110 pounds I am just too feeble to travel.

Yesterday was so low a blow I sort of went into shock, but I'm fine now. About 25 miles up the highway to St. Paul, I'd composed another short "windshield poem," and Dana Gioia called to assure me that he and his Dominican friends were praying hard, which I deeply appreciate. Here is my reaction to the worst PET scan imaginable.

Progress Report

Cancer: metastasis is everywhere,
attacking my left thigh,
my skull (it’s aiming high),
more vertebrae. My doctors don’t despair,

neither shall I. This new clinical trial
is really my last hope,
my drowning swimmer’s rope.
I leave the Mayo Clinic with a smile,

determined Murphy will return next week
to bolster an immune
system that plays my tune.
Maybe this is the Holy Grail I seek.

Tim!

I am thinking about you.

I was with Mary Ann Miller, editor of Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, at a reading in Caldwell last week. She noticed that you'd blurbed my Darwin sonnets, and lit up with praise!

I have only heard you read from the dais at West Chester, but that was enough to have total recall of your voice and your presence when you are reciting.

Hit that clinical frontier with all you got!

Much love,
Rick

Tim, I doubt that you have read The Fault in Our Stars, a book about a teenage girl with terminal cancer. But I have been thinking about it in connection with you. There is a line in it that goes roughly "Some infinities are larger than others," if I am remembering correctly. And the point is that length of life is not the measure of the thoroughness with which it is lived. You have always seemed to me to have lived your life with intensity. It sounds as though you are still doing so. That is what counts. You are still writing, even in the worst of times. It is the best thing to do under the circumstances. May you continue to do so.

Susan

Thank you Susan. Thank you Rick, may have said this in the blurb, but I always had the Beagle on my bucket list, and it was a thrill to see your Darwin sonnets unspooling here. Michael says he's betting on me. I wrote a really tiny ode for my big hunting buddy Steve a couple weeks ago. Here is the Epode:

Syrdal Speaks

Steve speaks in a dream,
likely a smoky bar:
“Things aren’t all that they seem;
though Murphy’s come so far
and the known risk is grim,
I’ll stack my chips on Tim.”

Then Steve adds with a grin,
“I’m all in.”

I'm experiencing just a flood of inspiration every day, even twice, four times a day. Twenty-eight poems since Holy Saturday. Thank you Holy Spirit.

Tim:

Extraordinary work amid extraordinary challenges.

Hang in there, buddy!

Mike

On a brighter, happier note concerning Tim -- please be aware that Tim's publishing board has unanimously approved the publication of two more books, which are forthcoming from North Dakota State University Press.

As the executor of his literary estate, I could not be more relieved and grateful, as you can guess, and I hope that everyone will continue to watch for these amazing works -- for amazing, they truly are.

Jennifer

Yes, and those books will be Hunter's Log, Volumes II and III and Hiking All Night.

Both wondrous works of art.

Thank you for noting that, Jennifer, Cathy. This is a big leap for NDSU Press, who published last year's Devotions. The new books total more than 400 pages. NDSU and my old farming buddies are also funding a mammoth New and Collected. It will run way over 1000 pages, and I'm sorry to say it will probably be posthumous. At least Jenny won't be casting about, Cherokee feather in hand, for a publisher.

My brother and I had a meeting with my radiation oncologist here in Fargo this morning, and he is not nearly as pessimistic as my oncologist at Mayo. I also met with my great personal physician this week, and he too is pretty upbeat. I begin the Mayo Moon Shot Monday, the combination of chemo- and immunotherapy that is cutting edge medicine. Meanwhile, I'm doing great, 25 pages added to Last Poems? since Divine Mercy Sunday, two Sundays back. I have never written this well or swiftly, not even close. Of course nothing makes me a happier camper.

Hi Tim,

I have to say that "The Mayo Moon Shot" - the combination of chemo- and immunotherapy that is cutting edge medicine - does have rather a nice ring to it, almost poetic - or else it sounds a bit like a cocktail!

I'm an incurable optimist, myself, and looking on the bright side of any situation is always the way to go, in my opinion.

Way to go, Tim!

Jayne

Dear Spherians,


A big day for Tim tomorrow. His message:


Immuno-chemo treatment two tomorrow. Prayers appreciated.



Cathy

Good luck, Tim.

May God be with you.

My heart is with you, Tim. You've got more poems to write!

May it be well with you, Tim.

Nil carborundum illegitimi, Tim!

Prayers from me, too, Tim.

Positive thoughts your way, Tim!

You're in my thoughts, Tim.

Lighting virtual candles for you in Breaux Bridge.

I am sorry to hear this news. My thoughts and prayers are with you Tim.

Also good luck.

Thanks everyone, for prayers and well wishes. As at the first infusion, I've felt great today, the immunotheraphy, but tomorrow the little portable chemo pump will make four days miserable. Dr. Mahipal is dialing back on the poisons to make them more tolerable. Hard to write light verse on chemo, but here goes. Tim

Grand Kahler’s "Economy Room"

My sailboat berths were roomier than this.
Stashing my portapump
in bed (nary a lump),
I zone out. Now four hours of brainless bliss,

my second blast, immunotherapy.
Amit cut by a third
my killer's killers. Word
has reached the troops of chemotherapy

that drip by drip they have five days to run,
to lay my lesions waste,
ruin my pasta's taste.
Why can't I just kill cancer wih a gun?

What's that? I need my throat, my spine, my skull?
Suffer. Amit has cells to kill and cull.

Hi Tim,

It's great that you are so stoical, and your sense of humour is well and truly intact!

You've reached out to SO many people, not just in the US but around the globe, with your wonderful poetry, and I'm very glad to have met you at West Chester in 2012.

Your indomitable spirit will get you through the next few miserable days. Good luck with the treatment.

Jayne

Hi Tim,

What Jayne said. Your continuing poetic production - among which this last - are a tribute to your character and resource in the face of adversity. I wish you the very best with your treatment. Courage, as the French say.

Cheers,
John