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.
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.