Courage
John G. Young, M.D.
Courage is pulling yourself
up to walk when you are
one year old, and falling
and pulling yourself up
again and again.
Courage is going to school
and doing your best
when your father raped you
the night before in a drunken
rage at your mother who went
off with a priest.
Courage is facing
incest-induced infertility,
risking twenty-five thousand dollars
and more that a surrogate woman
will not keep your husband's baby,
if she wants,
or give you that child to raise
if it is handicapped,
which is what happened.
Courage is taking
your hearing-impaired daughter
to speech therapy
through blinding snowstorms
to a therapist in the mountains
because she is the best therapist
in the Denver area.
Courage is taking your daughter
to speech therapy
in blind Orlando traffic,
to be belted from behind,
to endure nine months of pain,
sleepless nights and the loss of
function in your right arm, then
to risk being carved up by surgeons
to face a fusion that failed.
Courage is facing surgery again
knowing doctors have failed
you and your daughter,
and you don't know
if they will fail again,
but you go.
Courage is returning to a hospital
to be poisoned by nitrogen mustard
hoping to kill white cells that tear
at your myelin, risking
losing your hair
and your life,
because the stress of the accident
and the two consequent surgeries
aggravated your multiple sclerosis.
Courage is trying to smile
through your grief and loss
so your husband won't lose courage
in his despair.
Courage is pulling yourself
up to walk when you are
forty-five years old,
trying to move legs that won't move
across a floor with a cane
again and again.