one hundred days
Posted on Oct 6th, 2007
by 
jhalifax
jhalifax
matt galvano, at seventeen, diagnosed with cancer, did a hundred days in the hospital. now lives at upaya, and i learn from him every day....... no longer a cancer survivor....... just a human, being
100 days
Sometimes a day is a bed:
a bed with bleach-clean sheets
around which loved ones
gather, faces warm
and heavy. Sometimes
a day is a pain borne deep
in the body's channels;
the senses empty
(not even a sign in the window)
and time drips from a rusted
faucet. Sometimes a day
is a forgetting of who it was
you were before the needles
and nurses and colorless flesh –
before the pain and the bed:
My bed.
I have known 100 days
and more like this;
one day, actually, as nameless
and faceless as before I was born.
And I dare not ask for those
or that day back, nor wish
that they lie fallow amidst
some vast acreage awaiting
my return. Instead,
I consider those whose lives
were and are spent in this way,
exhausted of reason,
empty days and empty vessels,
dreaming life, dreaming me.
I would dream of the ocean,
my feet in dark, wet sand.
Now I bring everyone back
with me, and we sit together
and gaze to the pale blue horizon.
- M. Galvano
100 days
Sometimes a day is a bed:
a bed with bleach-clean sheets
around which loved ones
gather, faces warm
and heavy. Sometimes
a day is a pain borne deep
in the body's channels;
the senses empty
(not even a sign in the window)
and time drips from a rusted
faucet. Sometimes a day
is a forgetting of who it was
you were before the needles
and nurses and colorless flesh –
before the pain and the bed:
My bed.
I have known 100 days
and more like this;
one day, actually, as nameless
and faceless as before I was born.
And I dare not ask for those
or that day back, nor wish
that they lie fallow amidst
some vast acreage awaiting
my return. Instead,
I consider those whose lives
were and are spent in this way,
exhausted of reason,
empty days and empty vessels,
dreaming life, dreaming me.
I would dream of the ocean,
my feet in dark, wet sand.
Now I bring everyone back
with me, and we sit together
and gaze to the pale blue horizon.
- M. Galvano
Access: Public
Upaya
July 2008 
That Matt can simply “consider those whose lives were and are spent in this way” I count as a great health. Healthy deeper than pain, way beyond the bed, the horizon, a health not every body achieves. That not all folks reach Matt's generousity of spirit, some days, can make me sad, but the way it sounds like Matt is living and breathing in and out the whole thing makes me grateful to even hear of his days in his own words. Having read this poem I'll be listening closer for my own consideration of those whose lives were, are and may be spent in this way.
jiki