The Mind is a Rabbit Making Warrens of its Grief by Moriah Cohen, Listener Poet

Origin Story

Four weeks ago, the fourteen-year-old nephew of this Lead Innovation Specialist at a university hospital was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer.

“I’m getting to see the other side of medicine. Normally, I work in innovation, commercialization, and idea development, not in the clinical end. I wonder if these medical professionals, in caring for people who face such insurmountable odds, walk around all the time carrying this weight I’m hauling now.”

To help her family bear the devastating diagnosis, she leans on her strengths, scheduling doctor’s visits and keeping a calendar for her sister and brother-in-law. Facing such heartache, however, the mind burrows and spirals in its own directions. She finds herself bargaining sometimes, philosophizing others. She can feel guilty one second, and the next, utterly helpless: “It’s like there’s a rabbit in my head,” she explained, “and I’m just trying to get the rabbit to hop a little less.”

Moriah Cohen, Listener Poet
CLP Practicum Poem Cohort 5
Winter 2023

The Mind is a Rabbit Making Warrens of its Grief

By Moriah Cohen, Listener Poet

  you schedule bloodwork
follow-ups
calendar appointments on
post-it notes emails
to your sister
like you are brushing
crumbs from the counter
with one hand
while the other
tallies
statistics in this masterclass
on cancer–how
often patients die
within twelve months
the likelihood of its being
inoperable
the way it is
in your nephew’s
thalamus the precision
of radiation
the size of the tumor
how does one live still
with this knowledge
and not say
the heart with its
   many burrows
    and chambers
   is unlivable
   you watch your nephew
pull out enough
hair to make
a nest
mourn the arrow knocked
off course
say you do but do not
pray there is no
  quota on catastrophe
no lamb’s foot
nor talisman no insurance
to warden the kennel
when you cry you steal
your sister’s suffering
have no right
to pivotal
transformation
another baby
   in a house you yanked
   out of a hat
there is a rabbit
in your head
its foot on a brick scale
there is no through
no comfort to be born
  is to be blind
and hairless
and prey
to offer your body
to the fire
and pretend
you won’t burn

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