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POETRY

To God in My Illness

—after John Donne

Illness is our Great Work done
alone
  despite comparisons by friends.
Age and injury, incessant time
or random accidents
are not the same.

Illness makes one listen to the body,
You
have made in all complexity
and then abandoned, so it will remind
us we will sicken,
almost unto death.

God, I saw you walk in Feverland,
your touch
had turned the trees to smoke and fire,
and just the moment that you turned your head
I saw the look upon your face was
love

Illness gives me lessons where to go
for answers, God, you choose what I would
know.

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Royal Rhodes taught courses on the history of Christianity for almost forty years at Kenyon College. His poems have appeared in: Ekstasis Poetry, Foreshadow, Ekphrastic Review, Grey Sparrow, The Montreal Review, and elsewhere.

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