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Several years ago, I read one of my poems, “I’m Still Your Doctor,” at the World AIDS Day memorial service, I was surprised that my voice broke as I spoke. I felt ambushed by my feelings. But that’s the nature of grief, especially for healthcare workers. We tend to stuff grief down instead of processing it, so it sneaks up on us at unexpected and unwanted times.

Once, I started crying as I combed my hair in the morning, getting ready to go to work. Was it resentment at overwork, or lack of sleep? Yes, but also, a patient had just died. Not my first patient to die, nor the last. But the first one I found myself grieving for. I wrote this poem many years later, which appears in my chapbook, Rope Made of Bandages.

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Photo by Chuma A on Unsplash

Mend My Life

In the middle of hours, I walk out,
out of the clinic and into the rain.
My nurse’s round face

behind the front glass door worries
as I turn right onto Jimmie Leeds,
straight past the Seaview Resort, (more…)

photo credit: searagen

Fertilizer: A Sonnet

She plows the furrows, pushes past her wants.
Can she imagine rows and columns, summed
on spreadsheets as the basis for her work?
Or, does she dig down to her ballet class,

dance to Tchaikovsky all in lacy-white tulle
stitched with plastic violets for the waltz?
She isn’t graceful, but she moves with joy,
forgets herself, and driven to succeed, (more…)

photo credit: guruXOOX/iStock

About This Poem:

• This poem first appeared in Juked in May 2021.
• The inspiration for this poem was two-fold. Part of it came from a freewrite about the white noise machines installed at my clinic. The other part came from a comment by the pediatrician in our clinic. Children in all four of his treatment rooms were crying as he stepped out into the hall, smiling. “Do you like our symphony?” he asked.
• I surprised myself by what happened when I combined these two ideas. You can read about collisions of ideas here.

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