Have Patients, Have Patients, Don't be in Such a Hurry!

Two weeks from today I will start classes for my full-time nursing program. It's been a slow, upward climb these past six months, trekking back and forth between Capitol Hill and an outer-ring suburban community college 4 nights a week, all the while trying to juggle my more than full time job, home work, and staying in some sort of contact with those I hold dear. In six months I have taken 21 credits of lab sciences. I can name every bone of the body for you or do the necessary cultures to find out if the staphylococcus sample is from your skin or your tonsils. I've learned a thing or two. I applied and was admitted to a good program, won myself a scholarship, applied for financial aid, hired and trained my replacement, found a new roommate, ordered my textbooks, and learned CPR. For months, I've lain awake in bed, willing the next the months to go by, ready to move onto the next step, my new life.



All the boxes are checked, my physical and administrative ducks lined up in an orderly row. Now, I'm faced with the much more difficult task of preparing emotionally and mentally to walk into a hospital room and deal with what I find waiting for me, laying in the bed. Whenever Squirrel puked, I made a point of cleaning it up myself to practice taming my gag reflex. Now, I find myself standing in line behind people, waiting to buy a cup of coffee or get on the bus, imaging sticking needles into their neck. The idea of body fluids has never bothered me too much, but I've never even held a needle. More than that, though, I'm trying to prepare myself to step over a divide that separates health care and emergency service workers, clergy, and a few other groups, from most everyone else - a daily interaction with death. The idea of death has never bothered me too much, but I've never even seen a dead body.



Last night I lay awake for a long time, forcing myself for the first time to think of all the people out in the world who will eventually die under my watch, sort of wishing that the minutes would slow down, the days would tarry.

How to see clearly

Remove the lump from your
throat and put it in your pocket.
Keep it there. Walk a way. Wait.

Ignore the lonely moon for now.
The old man, too, and the spring rain
pasting the street with yellow leaves.
Remember: this is nothing new. Not
the cool air in your strong lungs. Not
the single bird watching from its high
wire. Now is not the time to stop. Not
for verbena, not for dear friends, not
even for the dead or newly dying.

Wait for a Tuesday - a Tuesday in mid-
July. Wait for a plain hour so hot that
it has stripped itself down to skin and
bone, down to planks of wood, down
to those unsurprising elements. 3:oo.

Step away from your life for a minute,
leave the building now and stand on the
street corner until the last young mother
pushes the last new baby out of sight.

Take the lump from your pocket and
watch as it crumbles in your hand.
Left with the fine dry dust, be happy.
When the wind picks up, uncurl
your fingers and let the grit swirl
around you. Open your eyes wide.
Keep them open and walk in the storm.

verbs, transitive

I do not know if I
am coming or going.
There is a wheezing
woman between the
snoozing man and me,
interrupting my reading ,
her yapping dog, escap-
ing, scampering down
the narrow aisle to the
delight of the squealing
child kicking the seat
of the disapproving,
expiring man gazing
at the covering clouds
layering the horizon,
obscuring New York,
its buildings grasping,
reaching. The dying
man is thinking while
brooding me is realizing
--going or coming--
there is no debating
that hurling above Earth
its axis tilting, its life teeming,
is nothing if not exhilarating.

Poem #3

Tick tock
goes the clock
and here
I sit
with writers'
block.

Love Haiku

When he is near me
this heart brims over with rhyme.
Love is that simple

cruelty, poetry, april

I have not written in so long and now it's April--the cruelest month-- National Poetry Month. So I will try to write a poem a day because, unlike Freddy Mercury, I work best under pressure - with deadlines. And if you like, at the end of the month I'll bind these poems in a book with a cover I made just for you.

April is the cruelest month.

April is National Poetry Month

I have not written in so long.

A limerick fit for an Irishman

In a castle that had a deep moat
Lived together a toad and a goat.
They wanted to go out
and wander about
If only they could build that boat.

don't have a cow

Goodbye Norman. You were a fine friend.

these arms of mine

IN a clean, clear, crystal glass I've put ice and just enough scotch to swirl around with my thoughts. The air itself is clear, early spring cool tonight and the moon is just past its prime, a shade less than full & slightly sad. Inside the house, Otis Redding is singing These Arms of Mine but I am sitting on the steps of the front porch, watching a cat creep out of the alley and listening to the wind run through the bamboo.

There are no stars. A few cars drive the down my street but mostly it is quiet. I think of the people I love in the world -- of my family scattered like seeds across the map; of Squirrel deep in the northern woods; Freddy and Charles asleep in their beds and Crazy A who knows where. The daffodils are up and buds dot every limb and branch though the forecast calls for freezing wind and rain. This is how it is now, I think, and wrap myself tighter in these arms of mine.