Wards and Words

A pooling of tears
A drip of blood,
Someone's pleural fluid on my shoe

A haze, a daze
Of faces gone by
In this tangled mess of days.

With their heart murmurs, abdominal wounds,
positive blood cultures, hypertensive medications,
referrals to nursing homes.

We feel the weight of their sicknesses
The strain on life and heart and brain
On muscle, sinew, bone.

And their families, lives, selves,
Somehow mingling with mine
In this incessant dash
Between computer key strokes
and constant nursing pages
ringing in my ears.

We are our bodies, in them we bear our sorrows.
We are defined by their suffering
And the responses of our souls
Coupled with the winding, winded scientific replies
We make, with whatever we can find to patch the holes.

One Day Wilderness

Do you remember, My Love
The woods in which we walked?
The paths leading to the door that opened
For your soul to wander free
with the deer, to turn/sprint away
At first hints of danger.

Do you remember, My Dear
the Rain that made your tears
Commonplace? That washed mud/sweat/blood
off, away to nourish some Wild tree.

Do you remember, My Soul, The River
That rose from its banks to find you?
To swallow all the parts of you
You had lost and had not yet found.

To allow you a jump into its depths,
A cold/dark/delighting beauty
giving way to breath, air, light.