Recalcitrant Lake - Explained

This is an explanation of yesterday's post, Recalcitrant Lake. First, the title. In this case the title was the first thing to come to mind as was the subject matter. The part of a poem that inspires the rest is like a butterfly that lands on your shoulder and whispers something like "recalcitrant lake" in your ear. And you start repeating it. I think this fell together quickly - one week - because of the urgency of it (hospital visits weigh heavy over time).

Once I had a butterfly whisper stuck in my mind for three years. It went "She can't get the flash to work". Every attempt at working that into a poem collapsed miserably but I still recognized that it was an anapest follow by four syllables forming an iambic meter. It had a good sound to it. Shortly before Mother's Day the rest of it hit me like a thunderbolt - just in time for a winsome Mothers' Day poem.

Now I hadn't used the word "recalcitrant" in some time and I wasn't sure if "Recalcitrant Lake" made any sense. I was surprised to find that the meaning was something like I'd remembered: resisting authority or control; not obedient or compliant, basically hard to deal with, manage, or operate. Combined with lake, a thing in which you could drown, it was an apposite description of what it must be like to have a disease raging through your body. It's almost too accurate a metaphor.

Sometimes something unpleasant is necessary, especially if its true. But this recalcitrant lake experience also is a nightmare for the significant other or others whose lives are rocked by the tidal waves of the disease, in this case ALS - the dreaded Lou Gehrig's. Indeed these are the two personalities of the poem, the patient and his wife, my friends John and Debbie. My ignorance of the paid caregivers is not meant with any disrespect to them. We have met many wonderful people who care deeply about Johnny's well-being. It's simply that their roles didn't find their way into this particular poem.

It's not good, not at all

not at all, consuming, gnawing

away at my vitality;

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis causes the muscle to wither and fail. It began in his shoulders then worked its way to his arms. When he had this terrible fall in October at the hospital(the beginning of this rapid decline), it became apparent that his feet were also coming under the spell of the corrosive muscular curse. His tongue and throat muscles were shrinking as well and now he is fed through a plug in his stomach.

IVs invade, filling an oasis

under my skin with numbing

concoctions making even

my bones tremble and grow soft.

A shaky hold I have, my lifedraining its putrid effluentover my bedpan, soaking the linens.The nausea of the IVs and the frustration of being incontinent.

It's not good, not at all,

not at all, as bauds of Pharma

make me sicker, make me dazed

and asinine alarms make me crazy.

"Bauds" is a little literary swipe from Wallace Stevens' classic "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird". There the bauds of Euphony, here the bauds of Pharma - the drugs that never work as good as they are explained they will. The reference to "asinine alarms" is that stupid nasally sounding "boop-oop" alarm of the respirator whenever the patient coughs or has trouble breathing.

I fight vile feelings of pique

My secret hope is that the world

will end tomorrow and take me with it.

Feelings of ire or pique (including wounded pride)are common in terminal patients.

For now I am speechless and rigid

I am the emergency in 372, hysterical,

I am the commotion, the Code Blue!

Perhaps a little poetic license here. John has had panic attacks but not a "Code Blue" - I think that's when something really bad happens (when my brother-in-law was rushed to ICU, they called it a "Code Blue" over the PA system). I wanted to bring to life that moment when the experts take over and send the family member(s) to the hallway. Commotion reigns.

You're still here, your still here

I can see you across the way

It's just you and me, surrounded

by the blurry, dry-erase names

that come and go like IVs.

In the commotion, the patient makes eye contact with their loved one. The hospital where John has been uses a dry erase board to list the nurses' names. He is surrounded by the nurses.

I have my one good eye fixed on you -

deny me not, not once nor thrice.

Don't let me die here, floating

like a starved jellyfish drowning,

depraved in this recalcitrant lake.

A plea to the loved one. "Not once nor thrice" is from the gospels. In the clip from "Passion of the Christ" that they used for the "Just As I Am" video, Jesus, wounded and bloody, looks out at Peter who is receding into the crowd trying to get away.

You're still there, you're still there;

I can see you between the scrubs,

The loved one has not abandoned him.

stop crying - I am mute but not dead,

I am dying but I am far from sad

Since John hasn't talked since November 26th, we really don't know what he is thinking. He has not made any expression of sadness though. In fact, he has given signs of bemusement many times.

I know that there is debt but my soul

tells me it will be paid in full.

In times like these the sick one has nothing to offer their loved one who stays by their side. This is a spiritual debt, which is why the soul tells him it will be paid in full. It truly is agape love - the highest form - that I see with Debbie and John. He has nothing to offer her at this point except things like bowel movements and hard work. Agape love is in control when someone commits in this way to another, in bold decision that there is no other way. It is then, when agape love is ushered in, that God is intimately involved.

I am better, come back and stay,

hold my hand while I sleep and dream

of contours green by still waters where

we lay unoccupied, unhurried, being.

Where else would agape love lead you but to this kind of peace and tranquility, beside contours green and still waters (a paraphrase of Psalm 23). That is the Valley of Death, you might say, does that mean I think Johnny will pass on soon? I don't know. ALS patients can last months and years past the time that all bets have been called off. But I end the poem with a present participle, and not just any present participle. "I am that I am" is the name the Lord tells us to call Him. And we are told that God is love (1 John 4:16), agape love. Through Debbie's total commitment to love Johnny, the dream comes true. The lake tends to be recalcitrant in this life but through love the waters are stilled, even now, and forever.

So there it is. A butterfly landed on my shoulder and whispered "Recalcitrant Lake" in my ear and this is what became of it. May it bring some loved one peace as they spend the night in the uncomfortable rocking chair next to the bed in the cold, contagious hospital, listening to the periodic shuffling of the nurses' feet and that damned "boop-oop" sound. May the Lord give you rest.