Another bit of poetry from the contest:

TO SYLVIA
~Maria A. Basile, M.D.

I am the sun, in my white coat.
– Sylvia Plath

The surgeon at 2 a.m. is not where you think she is.
She is not waging war on cancer.
She is not resting her 9 month
belly near the belly of a sleeping patient. She
is not answering another
solace-seeking call
from you.

She is not visiting her
sickest of patients. She is not
loving the husband she tells everyone about, but
barely touches.

She is not paying the mortgage. She
is not taking care of herself.
She is not even feeding
her baby.

The surgeon at 2 a.m. is
stroking sunset blood on college-ruled
canvas, breathing blue
abandonment between lines,
drenching gauze decay in bleach
and lye.

She is writing
for her life.

Please note the following credit:
“To Sylvia,” Touch: The Journal of Healing, Issue 1, May 2009, pg. 12; Strong Voices – a Year of Touch: The Journal of Healing, March 2010, pg. 17. Forthcoming in Private Practice by Maria Basile, The Lives You Touch Publications, Winter 2010-11.

*

Something Blue, Something New
~Ramona Bates

It’s two in the morning, the end of summer.
I greet you now, “How can I make you better?”
Your hand is cold, your face stained with tears,
Your voice trembles, you express your fears.

You tell me about Gina, Cathy, Brenda Lee
There are fifteen of you dressed splendidly.
Mimosas, margaritas; much more than a thimble
Partaken as you danced to the music, so nimble.

You tell me of the gold strap, bejeweled
Holding your shoe to your foot so tanned
As you stepped from the sidewalk.
Now you sob, unable to talk.

I clean blood, a dark red path away.
A sterile blue paper drape, I lay
Across your upper face
Tiny stitches pull your skin into place.

You tell me of your wedding dress
As your future husband caresses
Your hand, “It’s all right
Our future is bright.”

*

Untitled
~”A Bad Idea” Anastasia

Raised in conflict, of two minds
A child of God, the truth that binds
To heaven-
The creed passed down from times Nicene.
A child’s faith must come and pass.
For I have seen with my own eyes
The rings of Saturn, which to my surprise
Were yellow-
The purest yellow that I have seen.
There was naught in the tube but glass.
And I have tuned the radio dial
Turned towards the sky, the trial
A success-
The clouds that made the milky sheen
Were really, truly hydrogen gas.
I thank God I was lead astray-
Joined hands with Truth, and walked away.

More wonderful selections from the poetry contest:

What May Be Brought You, As One Dying
~Ruth F. Harrison

5 books of poems and a chocolate egg,
yellow flowers and water

pancakes with syrup and 10, 093 pills,
1, 093 summer fall spring mornings
on the road in your wheelchair:
blue chickory blossoms, a wild sunflower
77 picnics, your daily teeth, 4, 372 Depends
with accompanying fresh sheets. Crisp toast.

Your daughter may read aloud to you
what you have saved and written of your life;
you hear it as a pleasant sound, perhaps as events
passing, almost familiar, words voiced by a stranger

written about someone who doesn’t much
interest you. They may bring you poached eggs,
custard, clean hair, clean floors, may stand
inside the privacy of your bathroom, waiting.
A small child may teach you how to count
your fingers, a strange man may rub your ankles,
may whistle over the milk buckets on the porch.

That woman may rearrange your own kitchen
and hide your glasses and your other hat.
Someone will hand you a small dog and
take away your wedding-gift scissors. You

may be given wooden beads and fabric, a gray
kitten, the sounds of roosters crowing, a blue
jar-lid with WHIP WHIP WHIP repeating all
around it, a yellow cube with grouchy or sad faces,
a handmade calendar of very big days. Oh you

who gave so much, you must expect that some
of it, wanted or no, will now return to you.

*

What My Father Left (Me)
~Jordan Grumet

It wasn’t as
if the taste of things
had changed
Bitter fallow top
soil, the earth’s corrosive
bile
Death was still….
and life…ah
life
Sullied
by filial
infirmity…poisonous
umbilicus
And poor,
poor Achilles
bursting
nay exploding
in my
head

*

Dear Melody
by Rachel Swirsky

When we floated together in our mother’s womb,
I consumed you as one scared thing
will do to another in this lonely world.

My guru, David, says your soul is beautiful.
An artist’s soul. A dancer’s soul.
He pressed his face to my belly
& said he could see your aura
shimmering through my abdomen
lovely as a mirage.

I feel you when I sit in my organic co-op chopping kale
& dreaming about murals you’d have painted.
I feel you when I hear a homeless man melt joy
like rich warm caramel into his saxophone’s strains.
You beg me to slip off my moccasins
& dance barefoot on concrete.
It was you who wanted to dye my hair magenta,
wasn’t it?

Paris, my hypnotherapist, says understanding past sins
is the first step toward karmic equilibrium.
In her office behind the acupuncturist’s, she regressed me
back through memory’s folds to the time
when you and I embraced in our mother’s belly.

Yearning gaped in my essence
like the universe hungering for God.
The cells that were me transmitted that hunger
to the cells that were you
& your kind soul, your beautiful soul,
offered yourself to fill me.

I felt an echo of that hunger last night
as I lay with David on the beach
salt air lapping our skins, thighs pressed
into the timelessness of granite cliffs
worn by millennia into humble fragments of sand.
Gulls cawed, seals chorused, waves murmured,
the cosmos rumbling its approval.
David slipped his hand down my belly & tried to fill
my lingering emptiness.

Handless, tongueless, you took part as you could,
sending an egg with your DNA into my uterus
where David’s cells waited, ready to make
the child only we three could conceive.

For a moment as he filled me
as you filled me
I became one with the universe that is you & me & him
& kale & communes & murals & barking seals
him me you becoming
youhim
meyou
himmeyou
meyouhim
an endless recombinantion of souls & DNA
together miraculous
like clashing weather fronts birthing the wind.

Most people live forever terrified
the universe will abandon them
to the frozen pall of solitude.
I am so lucky to be twice filled
twice reassured I will never be alone.

Melody, I promise:
Our baby will learn
to paint & dance.

I’ve been reading through some fantastic poetry entered into the contest, and frankly I’m thrilled to see such thoughtful, artful, and eloquent writers out there.  With permission, I’m honored to share these poets’ words.  For the month of August I’ll be posting great poems as they roll in.  Here are three for today:

The Harvest
~C.L.Wilson

She talks to them; knows that
although the remnant quiver
of a working nervous system at the knife’s point
is not awareness but only life’s
most rudimentary reaction, still she turns
this residual life into death by her hand,
and this one death into six lives or ten,
or sight, or new bone and ligament,
a new blood type, new scars, new hopes.
They cannot hear or see, but perhaps they know
that their last cut was made with love,
their last gift remembered. Such a cut
can never wound, could never sting.

*

Pharmacology
~Jon Dean

Swallow Whole. Do Not Chew Or Crush.
Accept this directive unconditionally and
you will have your initiation to the unblooming –
it secrets revealed to you in the curling leaf,
the bashful twist of the morning glory’s skirts
rushing to hide her nakedness from Night.

TAKE ONE TABLET BY MOUTH EVERY EVENING
A mystery cult steeped deep in confusion awaits,
expectant of your religious devotion. Tarry at the altar
of your bathroom counter, and consider the seed.
Plant it. Allelochemical explosion to silence
the stomatal choir, singing the songs somatic.

This Drug May Impair The Ability To Drive Or Operate Machinery.
You will not be rejuvenated or renewed, but you will
awake, and that is a small victory. It is the seed’s gift
to you, a single stem in a yellow plastic bud vase.
Pollen is a soporific. Your blankets will become
integuments, and no one will fault you when they harden.

Use Care Until You Become Familiar With Its Effects.
There is a wonder in the diversity of the penultimate
form – some, once inflorescent, find themselves
syncarpous, others dry and flatten, a winged samara
catching the next breeze to swirl to distant fortune.
Incant to axiom: The flower must die in childbirth.

*

The Luminiferous Aether
~Chris Barrett

I.

She reaches across
me to turn
on the bedside lamp.

A cone of yellow light
knifes through the
darkness
and
I squint into it
as she answers
the phone.

It’s her mother.

II.

The flight east
is longer than I remember.

On such short notice
we were unable
to get seats
together.

She sits in the front
of the plane,
on the aisle,
listening to music
and
I’m in the back,
in a window seat,
watching
the sunlight skirr
along the cloud
tops.

III.

The sun is choked
by a knot of
gray clouds.

My wife, in
black, is stoic
against the
afternoon gloom.

Also in black,
her mother
weeps into
a balled tissue.

The sun emerges briefly,
illuminating the
polished teak of
the coffin.

A glint catches my
eye and I wince.

IV.

A lightning strike across
town triggers a power
outage.

A breeze whispers
through the
open window
of the guest
bedroom
and
extinguishes
a candle burning
on the table across
the room.

We are sheathed
in darkness.

Announcing the first annual 2010 Charles Prize for Poetry. Bold and pretentious name aside, the award will be given to the writer who submits for consideration the most outstanding poem within the context of health, science, or medicine.

Open to everyone (patients, doctors, science people, nurses, students, etc.).  1 or 2 entries per person.

Poems should be related to experiencing, practicing, or reflecting upon a medical, scientific, or health-related matter.

The winner will be selected by a panel of three judges, including me. These other judges may or may not be Nobel Laureates, you never know, but all appreciate poetry.  I may ask for your permission to post a copy of your poem on this blog as we go, with or without attribution as you wish.

Is such an eponymous contest grandiose? Yes. Does the limited poetry I’ve written carry the gravitas needed to make me an authority on the subject? No way.

But should your poem be selected as the winner, you shall receive a plaque, an award of $500, and a tasty cherry tomato from my garden. Seriously. At least one person has written that winning the cherry tomato is more important to her than all the gold in the world. I’m sorry that my budget is not higher, but I thought I could swing $500 without enlisting sponsorship.  Who needs an iPhone anyway?

Update – with so many great poems in so far, I think I’ll award a few surprise prizes for honorable mentions 🙂

So have fun, find inspiration, and send your entry to:

drcharles.examining *at* gmail.com medifast coupon

Contest closes August 31st.

España rules!

http://goal.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/how-theyre-celebrating-in-spain/

It’s been just over a month since the European Space Agency “launched” the Mars500 project, an earthbound simulation of an interplanetary mission to Mars. Six men climbed into a windowless mock spaceship on June 3rd to spend the better part of 520 days sequestered away from the world, with only books, games, work, shoddy internet, sleep, and each other to pass the time. The unprecedented simulation of a manned mission to Mars includes a 250-day period to get there, a 30-day visit, and a 240-day trip back home.

Critics argue that the experiment amounts to little more than locking up 6 men in a tin can for 17 months with no sun, fresh water, sex, or alcohol, and the hardship of showering only once every 10 days.
Continue reading →

On my Friday commute to work I sometimes hear a tale of someone’s life as recorded through Story Corps. NPR plays these short, oral narratives in which an “average” person recounts some significant moments in his life, or reflects on what really mattered in her every day routine. They are short, pithy, genuine, and often inspiring. Among the laudable characteristics that make humans unique is our ability to tell stories. On this particular Friday I listened to a singularly moving piece, only about 2 minutes long. It was recorded by a woman named Lillie Love who unfortunately passed away two weeks ago at 53 years of age.

She talks about how she mapped out her life at age 13. At 52 she envisioned herself married, with children, perhaps even grandchildren. But the reality of her life unfolded differently- she went through several miscarriages, a divorce, and the implied health problems that may have led to her passing.

She compares this disconnect between our dreams and our actual stories to the folly of designing a dress while you are wearing it.

When Lillie realized she would not be “the wife” or “the mother” she picked up the pieces and determined she would be a terrific sister, friend, and aunt. She states: “The life that I have now is not the life I thought I would have, but is the life perfect for who I am.” Thereby she resists the temptation to project her life in to the future, but rather accepts what the universe brings her, and finds happiness in her present circumstance.

My life is not the one I envisioned when I was 12 either. I’m not much of an outdoorsman, I don’t have kids, and my family ties are different from those of twenty years ago. But I am happy, and I increasingly resolve to search for and create happiness within the stream of time and place that I cannot usually control.

Lillie Love’s words are worth a posthumous listen.

May she rest in peace, and I thank her for the inspiration.  Despite the terrible time pressures of practicing family medicine, I need to turn off the clock every once in a while and just listen to another person’s story as they speak it.