Revision: Life and Death in the Hospital

A year ago, I decided to try something new, to write a poem (or story excerpt) a week and it's actually been successful; I only missed two weeks in the last year. It's fun and it keeps me disciplined. This year, I'll try to do more revision of old poems, more for myself than for readers. Otherwise, the blog is going to keep chugging along. I'm going to keep the mix of posts, from the day-to-day reporting to personal reflections to ideas about Medicine (capital M) to narratives about patients. As always, patients in this blog are usually a composite or sketch of people I've met; personal identifying information should never appear here. I try to cite any images I show.

I took two poems I wrote last year and merged them into this poem in an attempt to contrast the two very different scenes I witnessed.

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Life and Death in the Hospital

Her hair, cut in the style of a Japanese pop star,
a prevenient wild, pulling your attention
from the brewing storm, the nurses frantic.
Given the name Giraffe as she rolled through emergency,
I wondered about her identity.
What TV shows did this eight year old like?
Who were her friends? Did she like giraffes?
Ever since she was two, we knew the course;
what did the last six years mean,
how did her parents turn that corner?
An anime face, her pupils wide and doll-like
comforting to those who knew the least
who held her hand and bridged the chasm
rolling polka-dot socks onto her feet.

Up in labor room six, a Berkeley grad dances
nude, her belly flowing from corner to corner
shiny as the full moon. She feels rhythm
in her contractions, gives the anesthetist a wink
and turns up her iPod, a new age jazz.
Twirling, clothes strewn, prancing
in no particular manner but beautiful.
I imagine her baby, heart at a hundred twenty,
bouncing to an amniotic fluid samba
signing a lease out of confinement
into that embrace of sunlight
or at least, the San Francisco fog.