Hospital Poetry

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• A hospital isn’t a home
  There’s no room for emotions – and no space to cry
  A hospital isn’t a home
  There’s no hugs and kisses – and no one knows why
  A hospital isn’t a home
  And does anyone really care
  A hospital isn’t a home
  But I can’t be anywhere but here

• This is where your heartbeat lingers:
  somewhere between hospital bed sheets
  and the new-found aching in my chest.
  The bed in which you slept
  has been soiled by silent tears
  and your nervous sweat.
  You were always home to me,
  but I was robbed by all your misery.
  Replace your sorrows with an absence
  of yourself, and I’ll make my home
  in your hospital bed sheets.
  For some, this is a place of miracles.
  For us, it’s one of tragedy.

• It’s not that I don’t like the hospital.
  Those small bouquets of flowers, pert and brave.
  The smell of antiseptic cleansers.
  The ill, so wistful in their rooms, so true.
  My friend, the one who’s dying, took me out
  To where the patients go to smoke, IV’s
  And oxygen in tanks attached to them—
  A tiny patio for skeletons. We shared
  A cigarette, which was delicious but
  Too brief. I held his hand; it felt
  Like someone’s keys. How beautiful it was,
  The sunlight pointing down at us, as if
  We were important, full of life, unbound.
  I wandered for a moment where his ribs
  Had made a space for me, and there, beside
  The thundering waterfall of his heart,
  I rubbed my eyes and thought, “I’m lost.”

• Arriving late, my clinic having run
  past 6 again, I realize I don’t
  have cancer, don’t have HIV, like them,
  these students who are patients, who I lead
  in writing exercises, reading poems.
  For them, this isn’t academic, it’s
  reality: I ask that they describe
  an object right in front of them, to make
  it come alive, and one writes about death,
  her death, as if by just imagining
  the softness of its skin, its panting rush
  into her lap, that she might tame it; one
  observes instead the love he lost, he’s there,
  beside him in his gown and wheelchair,
  together finally again. I take
  a good, long breath; we’re quiet as newborns.
  The little conference room grows warm, and right
  before my eyes, I see that what I thought
  unspeakable was more than this, was hope.

• I
  By the road to the contagious hospital
  under the surge of the blue
  mottled clouds driven from the
  northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the
  waste of broad, muddy fields
  brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen
  patches of standing water
  the scattering of tall trees
  All along the road the reddish
  purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
  stuff of bushes and small trees
  with dead, brown leaves under them
  leafless vines-
  Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
  dazed spring approaches-
  They enter the new world naked,
  cold, uncertain of all
  save that they enter. All about them
  the cold, familiar wind-
  Now the grass, tomorrow
  the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
  One by one objects are defined-
  It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf
  But now the stark dignity of
  entrance-Still, the profound change
  has come upon them: rooted, they
  grip down and begin to awaken

• Hospitals remind me of my father.
  The chilly fluorescent lights stinging.
  So much pain, but
  It has to go somewhere.
  Concentrated.
  Most people forget it exists until it’s too late-
  Life or death,
  And maybe hope.
  She wasn’t as gentle as I would be,
  Spoonfeeding him.
  His back, crooked, hunched.
  His gnarled hands, like weathered wood.
  My head on his chest.
  I remember late nights,
  Doing homework on my lap.
  Fidgeting.
  Pinching siblings overwhelmed by boredom.
  I barely recall the sound of his voice.

• i’m staring at the iv bag
  praying it would just
  empty faster but i know
  that’ll do no good and
  it’ll take at least another
  two or three hours and
  you’re sitting in what
  looks to be the most
  uncomfortable chair
  in the world and i
  invite you to lay on
  the most uncomfortable
  hospital bed in the world
  with me but you said you
  didn’t want to take up too
  much space and crush me
  but to be honest i don’t
  think i’d mind being
  smothered by you
  i’d still love you

• I like seeing nurse frieda knitting
  as I like watching my wife knitting
  as I liked watching my mother knitting
  though she was more of a dabber
  (plain and purl, plain and purl)
  it’s not
  “women being in their place”
  or knitting the chains that keep them down
  just
  the future, knitting the future
  the present peaceful, quiet
  as if
  the same woman knitting
  for a thousand years

• Next to Children’s Hospital, in a hurry
  Down the stairs, two at a time
  Slowed down by a family, moving slowly
  Blocking the stairway, I’m in a hurry
  I stop, annoyed, I’m in a hurry
  Seeing me, they move to the side
  A woman says softly, “sorry” in Spanish
  I look down in passing, there’s a little boy
  Unsteady in gait, holding onto an arm
  Head shaved, stitches in scalp
  Patch over eye, thin and pale
  He catches my eye and gives me a smile
  My walk is slower for the rest of the day

• They gave him a bed by the entrance
  Of the surfeited hospital’s wing,
  A drought blew on him every instant,
  With air and with smell of iodine.
  The window was a background –
  The sky and the garden in parts.
  The novice was watching, around,
  The coats, the floors and the wards.
  When, lo!, from the nurses’ fast questions,
  (Was shaking with her head a while),
  He learned that he hasn’t any chances
  To go this place out alive.
  Then he, very thankful, looked out
  The window, where a high wall,
  Was lit up by glare of the town,
  As if by the sparks of star-falls.
  There was the red suburb; and boughs,
  Of trees in red glare that swells,
  Were making the sorrow bows,
  Like trying to say farewell.
  “O, Lord! How perfect and dipped
  Your works” thought the man to the sight,
  “The beds, and the walls, and the people,
  The death and the city in night.
  I’ve had sleeping tablets and here
  I weep, plucking my cambric through.
  O God, the emotional tear
  Prevent me from looking at You.
  It’s nice, when dim light has been stolen
  To my deathly bed’s whitened sheets,
  To know that I and my dole
  Are Your irreplaceable gift.
  And dying in this clinic’s section,
  I feel the blessed warmth of your hands.
  You’re holding me – your craft’s creation,
  And carrying – your ring – to your case.”