November 20

Dear Keats,
Would you agree

that poetry
is basically an art

in the same vein
as bone-setting?

You set your fair share
of fractures, should know

that healing
is an unruly thing,

as we make a suggestion
and wait and see

what grows
around it,

or often more like read
between the lines—

Sometimes the course
of care is as inevitable

as a river near
its outlet, say

tuberculosis, once?
I know you know this.

I wonder what you’d think
of how the ICU chimes—

I don’t know what half
the sounds mean, yet,

still getting lost in the way
the whole floor moves

beautifully if often
futilely, code blues,

elevator overrides,
living things so hard

to mend, and loathe
to last, words

still our best
and only real palliative.

OPTIONAL POETRY