For Cassie
I've sat outside your door all morning
guarding you against yourself you
cannot promise staying safe all morning
I've sat outside your door dark
hall reading
moving my chair into
your room opening curtains
everything shifts I see
mountains soft traces of fog
I watch you sleeping child of sixteen
arms and chest wrapped in gauze
covering cuts you inflicted razor cuts
I recall hours ago listening
your heart counting its beats
talking with you telling of tape
I would place round your breast arms legs
hooking wires watching machine spit
tracings of your sixteen-year-old-heart
heart already damaged Cocaine's allure
giving you pills water easing
withdrawal asking you breathe
deeply injecting one then the other
slender hip
then you wept and I wept
you in pain and I at the beauty of
your hugs green eyes
(previously published in Knock!, 4/04)
A
NURSE'S FAREWELL
1. Calling
My hands guided my nurse's
instinct my hands heard
a million voices howling
yipping like wolf pups
longing for sustencance
My hands listened to stories
of fear and uncertainty
my hands listening drew me forward
magnet pulling me along
Perhaps I sensed what lay ahead
2. Connection
Longing to connect with another
human rhythm, to feel a beat
singing within my fingertips
We'd nod in agreement
patient and I slowly
we'd search for the song
that held us in gentle synchrony
3. Healing
Healing arrived like the flame
I kindled as a child
blowing on a twig singing Rise up flame!
like a bone's fracture line
soon strong enough to bear
the body's weight
like the whisper of a child
propelling my hands toward life
begging to touch the next man
or woman or child with those eyes
Oh God those eyes
that fractured my heart again and again
4. Pain
Despite hope I know something
deep within me
healing has not stopped by in a long time
instead fear knocks upon the door
fear like the sucking of marrow
from my bones demanding
I be steadfast when my being
silently shatters like safety glass
writhing bodies lash at me
the words of enraged physicians
the voices of those trusted to administrate
threaten to suspend my work
should I become ill one more time
Fear comes with deep fatigue
like being knocked out
the threat, the deep fatigue
of witnessing unrelenting sorrow
those with inappropriate diagnosis
those not sick enough sent home to die
and this is how we manage our care
5. Hope
I recall healing's presence
even moments of laughter something
I no longer hear within these walls
except yesterday when laughter slipped in
through the back door by mistake
It's not in my nature as nurse
to let her go
6. Resolve
I wait and healing does not come
yet I long for it a yearning unlike any
I can recall as adult or child
I must leave I cannot believe it is so
after twenty-five years the price
of being a nurse has become too high
and compassion is on the list of endangered species
Previously published in Intensive Care: More Poetry and Prose
by Nurses, edited by Cortney Davis & Judy Schaefer (University
of Iowa Press, 2003)
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