I Want to Work in a Hospital

It's hard to find the right words for the events-- political and pandemic-- of this past week. I considered poems about the USA, about resilience, and about patience. Ultimately, I've fallen back on our work. Nurse Practitioner and poet Cortney Davis writes about life in medicine with compassion, honesty, and a welcome touch of magic. She reminds me that there is no need to wait: I can make positive change, and be changed myself, every time I see a patient.

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I Want to Work in a Hospital

Cortney Davis

where it's okay

to climb into bed with patients

and hold them--

pre-op, before they lose

their legs or breasts, or after,

to tell them

they are still whole.

Or post-partum,

when they have just returned

from that strange garden,

or when they are dying,

as if somehow because I stay

they are free to go.

I want the daylight

I walk out into

to become the flashlight they carry,

waving it

so God might find them

as we go together

into their long night.

This poem is from the collection "I Hear Their Voices Singing," published by Antrim House in 2020.