Poetry

“I have nothing more to give. I have run out of gas.”

These were the tragic last words said by a fellow physician before ending it all.

Too busy to think and too strong to cry
Life must keep going, no time to think about why

In the world of “fear of missing out “
I see faces missing out on life
I see eyes filled with emptiness
I see minds constantly at war
I see hearts about to burst

A room
And a bed
A man
And alas

A wake
And still waiting
I see you
Half masked

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

Every death is different,
every monologue of wind,
every cloud dappled sky,
every spongy trail of moss. 

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

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.

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?

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

It’s always with me,
A forever companion forged by circumstances not within my control.
Like a rash that lessens in intensity but never fully goes away.
Or a forgotten bruise that hums with pain at the slightest touch.

Skin—simple, yet complex.
Pigment—oh, why the rage?

How do I even live?
When do I start living?
Why do I feel like my life hasn’t started yet?

They asked him if he was feeling okay
after having just donated a unit of blood,
being concerned with his well being
knowing that some bodies act differently
with a change of bodily fluids, especially
with the recent loss of a pint of blood.

The toxic one once told me he avoids me at all costs.
“I wouldn’t be at lunch with you if it wasn’t for our boss.”

He didn’t know where to stop
so he kept going, kept going,
excising strip after strip,
two millimeters at a time.

Nearing cronehood
I’ve had my share of trauma and tragedy.
Buried loved ones,
my own war wounds.

I expect he’ll come home
from the hospital—thin,

but still barrel-chested.
I’ll nurse him.

I was sitting down to dinner
when you left this earth.

I had just bathed my daughter
and looked at the time.

The hole in my chest,
better than a daily pierce,

my three-headed dock
for tubes.

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

a Lion sleeps
so others may know peace

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.

When I think about it, I lose my breath.
I feel like the weight of the world is crushing my chest into my spine.

In a quiet classroom where science meets soul,
A guide and lifelong learner presides,
Weaving tales of anatomy with threads of compassion,
Each lesson a stitch in the fabric of care.

There is nothing more simple
than how you find your joy.
And not the kind that’s derived
from games or from toys.

Britney gloves up and wonders
if she has a taco seasoning packet
in her kitchen cabinet where she stores
her spices and her sanity while doing twelves
at the nursing home.

Why did she push the child 
down down in the bath
and hold her there in a womb of scalding heat
to thrash like a fish

So here he is,
stepping into the sunlight,
missing half a leg
but defiant.

My toes once clutched pool edge
curled bird claws
teetering betwixt
excitement and fear,
racing dive or belly flop?

It has happened before. 
Remember the flood.
Remember Atlantis.
Some do.

Color of oxidized metal or the brown  
of fungus on a rose leaf. Stainless steel  
won’t corrode, neither will plastic. But once, 
I ran my finger over a spot of powdery bronze  
on a cast-iron skillet, marveling how the color 
stained my skin.

God clears the path 
traffic is non existent
Monday morning 
in Southern California
Mission Hospital our destination

I miss those emails 
you sent me:
called me licorice boy

The plastic cup could only hold one ounce
of liquid or a few pills, two or three;
you swallowed them then from your bed you threw
down the wretched vessel in defiance.

Then the World held no comfort for me; and
within a pause, all my ‘before’ and ‘now’
blanched invisible with the rapid dilation of
my collapse;

That’s short for formaldehyde.
Dying of a fatal arrhythmia at 94,
Al was a grandfather,
a lover of tattoos,
and my first patient.

The man whose wife is having a baby
crouches in his chair like a fetus,
can feel himself kicking.

Like Aspen leaves adrift on yellowed-cold,
we flutter, down from youth – to frailty.

I plan on getting you around the house
as you hobble from room to room
with your right leg bandaged up
and swollen from a recent surgery.

cancer in her bones
cancer in her cage
frantic butterflies
trapped in a rage

The emergency department, a bustling fray,
Trucks backed up in the ambulance bay.
A mother and child, full of fear,
Scared of needles, lots of tears.
So much the child couldn’t understand,
I took a moment. I held her hand.

Twelve ounces coffee 
with skim milk, not whole, then walk
forty minutes flat

Our radio wouldn’t dare blast through my father’s orations;
he’d tote his small son on drug rep calls, navigate back roads, the ultimate detail man.

I watch my mom for signs she’s going to be leaving me soon, even as she’s still here. She looks more fragile. A little more lost. Is she?

Together, we’ll visit our friend
who no longer knows us, and pluck
those pesky little whiskers
off her chin.

There’s nothing as beautiful as a marina at dawn
the clacking of ducks
the sky clearing away
the remnants of a storm

Transition states not stasis not static
No longer substrate, not yet product
Highest energy on reaction coordinates
Breaking and making covalent bonds

For a DaTscan
to confirm 
I have Parkinson’s,
I am injected
with a radioactive tracer.

You came alive at dawn, craving speed,
eager to clock time and distance.

I will bundle you in blankets and place you 
on porches in cure chairs to keep you

“Dad, do you know what day it is?”
“Yes, it’s my birthday.”

Sometimes forgetting is willful, even hoped for.
How he carried himself as he walked across the yard,
Between one building and the next.

I pivoted on the balls of my feet,
to not fall off to the left or the right
but to sit me down on the flat part
of the roof.

Arctic icebergs are breaking up,
Melting Antarctica airport-runways need new sub,
Strong gales have torn apart buildings, Oops:
Flooding also moved houses like floating cups.

The evening began with a question to myself.

“Will I have to give out medical advice at this wedding, too?”

All the world is on the wind:
Plants coming into bloom,
Distant fires burning forests and homes,
Smokestacks exhaling on the third shift,

An Epic poem
My E.M.R. symphony
A Haiku haiku

I could die on a day just like this
With a slant of sun casting dramatic shadows on my face
The nattering birds are finally unconcerned now the snow
Is melting into mud and their feeder is full again

The limbic system behind the game
They say it’s all in the brain,
The amygdala that is not the same,
Smaller than all, experiencing more pain!

It will, like a limb crashing-down
behind you on a wooded path,
cause you to turn, startled,

Argument on hold, we sit. 
The waiting-room phone rings;

we don’t know the name. 
We’re beginning to feel like drones

He’s forgotten, I hear
them whisper, what
he’s learned or loved.

She has toiled, she has wept, 
Mornings of cold and fatigue,
She has bit odds and awoken,
Yet today, she smiles,

There is nothing to say—
this moment, now, with you,
is so fragile, so transient that
it can only be known but
never expressed or spoken . . .

She is an artist
Painting pictures

Shiny wire rims encircle wrinkled eyelids,
pinkish chiffon veils gliding across Sycamore orbs;
cornflower blue sclera injected with burgundy webs,
underlined by ashen puffs of fatigue.

The contents are “time-sensitive.”
I slit the envelope with my finger.

Gray skies spread above us like lace
on a communion tray.
Inside, they fed my father

He carved a spot of skin today, and then another,
The slice all stained to find the danger,
In search of foes, to map the border.
Just a bit more, he dug in deeper.

What moves, shore or ship,
when souls sail, blinking,
heartbeat . . . a blip,
yonder fog engaged,

muted by seas

I find myself starting to repeat
the names, like Mom did,
from the top, so she could get
to the one she wanted.

Cough cold, fever, and chills
Here’s the season of growing medical bills

LOVE is not for everyone.
Avoid LOVE if you are not prepared, as this may cause a sudden, unsafe drop in blood pressure.

No one will know, now, or care
that, in your rush this morning,
you grabbed one dark blue sock
and one black in the rumpled sock drawer.

A week ago, you thought the next breath could be your last.
The family and friends were buzzing with worry
and all visited you in such a scurry.
The nurses and doctors fixed you—quite fast! 

I sometimes just felt the reds and yellows randomly cutting through the greens, but without thinking, without appreciation, without judgment. 

Roses from Susan and a christening
into what I have no idea of.

On Terminal Disease Square, at the intersection of Doubt and Despair, live the Benders of time,

The art of sighing isn’t hard to master;
each day greets us with news of fresh disaster.

You could fly for an instant
whole body in separate hands
cupped and held hands
you could fly when they let you

Midnight. Sleep eludes me.
As hours pass, my brain is full
of the usual black dogs

I’m twenty-one, touring a Chicago hospital in a dirty-snow winter, trailing a student who raves about the school, its illustrious doctors.

I remember her clumping tread
the rubber-tipped cane
striking the floor before
the halt-slide step

In a slot of Grandma Ada’s rolltop
I found a hand-colored photo
of Uncle D. in his Marine uniform, smiling,
eyes bluer than the overbright sky
of the hand-tinted tropical backdrop

Her mom’s been bleeding for days.
Transfusion after transfusion
As if her veins were sieves

Nanuk thought it was time,
time to go out on the ice,
to relieve her family of one more useless
mouth to feed during this hungry time

We’re all Gatsby, always have been, standing lonely on our own pier, 
Looking for the certain future, rich as Croesus, really, in this world, 
Food, rent, man, and printed books online. It’s all on line!

Under the dresser
a small plastic button
uncovered as if
all of the sudden,

I could have used the set of traveling colors,
the brush with its barrel of water.

They still call it that
Even though now it’s all just screen time
Of course it is day
Definitely.

In the beginning there is chaos.
Alarms and running and pressured orders.
A conglomerate of people with a shared goal.

I laugh when others laugh,
but offer naught to conversation;
standing still against a shaded wall
observing without participation.

Snowflakes wide

as white hens. Amaranth

bleeds scarlet on the snow.

You will care for them when it’s time
With static eyes, pores firing off sweat,

The guy in charge of the cemetery
said I would like this site.
It has a seasonal view, Mead’s Mountain in winter,
and you can hear the stream year-round.

I saw geraniums
in the first snow,
blood-bright,
upright,
and one yellow daisy.

sacrificing self.
physicians spend a lifetime,
to save another.

People flicker out. Each of us has an unknown
expiration date.

It was a fine Sunday morning
when I felt the first sign.