December 21
a short eulogy for the shortest day of the year— it rained construction went on indomitably across from the hospital inchoate orderliness enviable what a job to fix something fixable
All posts tagged: healthcare
June 6
A closed door with a cart outside, coffee service with paper cups, three small apples in a plastic bowl with plastic wrap across the top— a bereavement tray, nothing more to be done. This is the work. Sometimes I get a small, ripe grief lodged in the back of my throat, taut as a grape skin. And what for? I only know that you were. I can’t say any more.
December 19
From the cancer ward a view, a dream of a lake. All this glass is sterile, frosted– we soften everything we can soften. Sometimes with meds. I recall how, when half-crazed, you tried to leave and carry off a decorative vase, and your paintings got much wilder, vivid wet. There is no crimson here, only windows the color of sea-glass, and clean lacquered pine. It is peaceful and nice– so quiet, floors above the street, the orderly bridges, elegant rooftops, that I can hear blunt dread roll in my stomach as I […]
December 16
At work, tragedy rooms– To favor a side is not the same as being wrong. These families, they furnish the place with love and grief– any place can be a home, except alone. Tonight the city lights don’t remind me of anything. Sometimes it’s as if this heater isn’t even on.
OPTIONAL POETRY 