By Stephen Jones

Clinic, bright, Crayola haze,
Goldfish cracked on the floor
Tracing narrative, development’s maze
Make sure toddlers don’t run out the door!

Brain waves dance as art,
Path to healing, feeling strong
Spark in a young beating heart,
Where once was fear, now a hopeful song.

Now bad news of an experienced seizure
As I try to explain how their life may be
Parents fret about another procedure
Resilience blooms in the child I see.

Hospital set in the Ozark hills
Helping families comfort to see
Conversation flows to tablets and pills
And fewer questions ’bout my M.D.

Stephen Jones, M.D., is a pediatric neurologist in Northwest Arkansas. He and his wife have four children, so he spends plenty of time reading Dr. Seuss and books like Where the Sidewalk Ends.

By Stacey Thompson

Sometimes they won’t understand,
The choices held in your own hand.
Sometimes they won’t agree, it’s true,
With what you know is best for you.

Sometimes you’ll stand alone in light,
But don’t despair, don’t fear the night.
For like the daisy, bloom in grace,
Stand tall and steady in your place.

It faces sun with open heart,
Though winds may tear, or storms may start.
Rooted deep, it will remain,
Through doubt, through sorrow, even pain.

So when you’re left to stand alone,
Be proud of the seeds you’ve sown.
In quiet strength, your path you’ll pave,
For those who bloom are always brave.

Stacey Thompson is GME Program Coordinator for the Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine program and Body MRI Fellowship Coordinator for UAMS Department of Radiology.

By Benjamin Waldrum

When a distant star looks back at us
Through its lidless, unblinking eye
Ablaze and indifferent to time
What will it see from what remains?

Will it understand the name we gave it
Since we ourselves will never visit
In our tendency to make familiarity
From the cosmic terrors of the void?

Will it zero in on our lonely galaxy
And our almost-empty solar system
Past planetoids and moons
Over the remains of rusting science projects
To the pale and bluish dot that was our home?

Will it penetrate our web of space debris
Through our shrinking atmosphere
Scan through the melted ice and risen oceans
To once alive but now eroding shores?

Will its unending sight perceive the gravity
From the sum of all of human history
And pronounce us a success or failure
A blink of time in which to judge?

Will it weep for what is there no longer
The precious joy of our existence
Curiosity, kinship, laughter, determination, love
Seen only now as ruins, overgrown?

Or will it find another heavenly neighbor
Infinite siblings of past and future
Existing, dying, born anew
To fix its silent gaze upon?

Benjamin Waldrum is a communications manager in the UAMS Office of Communications and Marketing. He has maintained a lifelong fascination with words and writing, and only requires occasional prodding to produce his own.

By Debbie Baxter

My mother waved and talked to everyone, laughing 
at the antics of five little girls all dressed up for church.
Then hundreds of people filled her room, mostly couples, 
some of them with children. But all of them loved her 

and wanted to be near. They stayed there all night, even
though she told them to go home, she needed sleep, 
but they remained in her room. Soon, they were coming 
and going, taking whatever they wanted, like a store. 

She told them again to go, but they kept on all night,
until she yelled at the man who was lying in her bed.
That’s when I raced to her room and found her sitting 
on her walker near her hospital bed. She’d climbed

out of it with the railings still up, scooted to the end,
stood and stumbled a few feet without help, then grabbed 
her walker to move to the bed’s side. How she managed,
I’ll never know; I was just relieved she hadn’t fallen.

I told her I’d made the big man go, tended to her bloodied 
wrist (injured on the side of the bed), and tucked her blanket
back around her. She needed rest, but mumbled incessantly
until dawn, exhaustion and sleep finally taking her over.

Next morning, she tells me most of the people were gone; 
only a few still floated at the edges of her sight. By afternoon,
she was herself, lucid, intelligent. She couldn’t find any visitors
but seemed a little sad. She knew her blind eyes couldn’t see, 

but she’d really enjoyed the attention. I tell her how much
I love her and don’t want to share her, then I give her a big hug.

It’s not the same, she says, and turns her face away.

Deborah (Debbie) Baxter is an award winning poet who lives in Chesapeake, Virginia. A graduate of Old Dominion University, Debbie continues her creative writing education at The Muse Writers Center in Norfolk. Her poetry reflects her Southern roots and ties to family. Her dearly departed mother, who lived with Debbie for several years and recently passed at the age of 106, is the inspiration for many of her poems, including this one.

By Libby Grobmyer

No model’s hands are these—
bony and thin skinned, prominent
blue veins—even when I was young.
My granddaughter studies them
now, with a look that feels familiar

as I remember studying my own
grandmother’s hands—half
revulsion, half curiosity. Holding
my hands as a palm reader might,
her tiny fingers trace the network

of veins, pressing in, then releasing.
I now see a pattern of sorts—maybe
a heart line here, a life line there,
intersecting then circling back, an
intricate web of blue that seems to

have no beginning and no end; rather,
arising and fading as a mystery. I wish
I’d known your grandmother, Mary says,
looking up with her bright blue eyes.
You know her hands, I think to myself.

Note:

This poem was written in response to an intimate moment between a grandmother and her young granddaughter. Although there were only two people present, the spirit of the ancestors was keenly felt. Past, present, and future became one in the simple gesture of holding a hand. 

Libby Darwin Grobmyer, M.A., BCCC, is a board-certified clinical chaplain and serves as chaplain with the Division of Palliative Medicine at UAMS. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia and a Master of Arts degree in Public History from UA-Little Rock. She is also a graduate of the Haden Institute for Spiritual Direction in Kanuga, N.C. and has trained at Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, N.M. Libby lives in Little Rock, Arkansas with her husband of 52 years. She has three children, seven grandchildren, and two beloved miniature dachshunds. In addition to writing, Libby enjoys reading, traveling, and needlepoint.

By Jennifer Griffin

A room
And a bed
A man
And alas

A wake
And still waiting
I see you
Half masked

A ring
That began
What soon is to end

Returned as your sign
My lover
My friend

A rasp
And a rattle
A breath
that won’t come

A moment
Of struggle
And then
all is done

Pooling
And cooling
At the rise
Of the sun

A man
On a bed
And a woman
Left one

Jennifer Griffin Gaul, a classically-trained pianist and music educator, is the Executive Director of Joy of Music Program (JOMP) in Worcester, Massachusetts. She began writing poetry and micro-fiction after the death of husband jazz guitarist Scott Sherwood (www.scottsherwood.com) from lymphoma. Unable to turn to music, she found writing to be vital means of processing Scott’s loss. 

By Matthew Freeman

I promise you that I’ll never arrive
at an imperfect conclusion. I will tell you,
this new Vraylar
is making me feel things I haven’t felt
in twenty-seven years. It’s like
no time has passed and once again
I’m an angry young man. I guess I have to pass
through the narrow place. And I’m abject—
I couldn’t afford a cigarette lighter—and God
surely wants it that way.
I just have to be careful
with my body language, my performative,
so I don’t give anyone
the wrong idea.

I don’t understand what went wrong today
with my diabetes shot
but I got blood over everything
as I danced to the sink and tried to
clean myself up.
It was quite an experience
for a guy so used
to doing nothing.

Matthew Freeman writes about his recovery from a dual diagnosis and his time spent at Parkview Place. His next book, Dopamine and the Devil, is forthcoming from Coffeetown Press. He holds an MFA from the University of Missouri-Saint Louis.

By Taylor Tucker

a Lion sleeps
so others may know peace

a dark night ends
the glow of Mourning begins

a new dawn and new day
but the memories, they stay

as she closes her eyes
the ones she holds dear will rise

the Lion sleeps
now others
know peace

Taylor Tucker, M.D., is a Resident Physician at UAMS.

By Brittany Beasley

When I think about it, I lose my breath.
I feel like the weight of the world is crushing my chest into my spine.
My tears flow freely like a faucet on full force.
I try to find the words, but all that comes out is the silent screams of an ugly cry.
The breathless scream you feel in the depth of your soul.
The grip is so tight all I can do is lie in the floor while my tears dampen the carpet beneath my face.
My stomach turns into a hard knot with overwhelming disgust.
All I want to do is make everything better, but I am powerless.
It is strange in moments like this you realize how helpless you are and how delicate life is.
We never truly know the meaning of, “…the days are long, but the years are short…” until we are met with the finality of time.
Time waits for no one, slows for no one, and stops for no one.
Although at this moment, it feels as if time stands still, and the world stops turning. However, time is ticking…
Ticking on just as the world is still rotating while I lay here breathless in this sorrow.
How can it be that time is both infinite and finite?
What a quandary of the universe.
It seems as if we have all the time in the world until it all comes crashing down.
Then we wonder where time went.
As if time can come and go.
But time is constant, always there, always ticking, ticking away.
Everyone wishes they’d acted differently if they had known time was slipping away.
Time is fleeting.
In the end time spares no one.

Brittany Beasley, Ph.D., RN, CNE, is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, where she teaches both undergraduate and graduate students. Her research focuses on telehealth in acute care and nursing education innovation. With over 20 years of experience in acute care, intensive care, geriatrics, telemedicine, research, and nursing education, Dr. Beasley is a Certified Nurse Educator. She mentors BSN honors students, coordinates acute care clinical experiences, and has designed and taught a graduate-level telehealth course. Actively engaged in faculty governance, she chairs various college and university committees, serves on the Academic Senate, and is the President of the Gamma Xi at-Large Chapter of Sigma Nursing.

By Paulette Guerin

Living by the hospital I hear
at any hour the helicopter
lifting someone in or out.

The sky is neither open nor quiet.
The stars don’t turn away;
they are sucked blind in the city lights.

We’ve spent years praying
for those airdropped in.
We’ll never know their names.

Paulette Guerin lives in Arkansas and teaches writing, literature, and film. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, The Southern Review, epiphany, Carve Magazine, and others. She is the author of Wading Through Lethe (FutureCycle Press) and When I First Loved You (forthcoming from Belle Point Press). She also has a chapbook, Polishing Silver, as well as a chapbook-sized selection in the anthology Wild Muse: Ozarks Nature Poetry (Cornerpost Press). Her website is pauletteguerin.com.