Saturday, June 11, 2011

The Poetry of Surgery


I'm not crazy about the idea of these blogs getting too personal or straying far from the theme of poetry in all its wonderful forms...but I
think the anesthesia from recent surgery has dulled my brain, so I'm going to write a few lines about a seeming oxymoron--the poetry of surgery. When I mentioned this idea to my friend and fellow poet Helen, she replied that I would then be on the cutting edge. Indeed.I guess one could stretch and see the surgeon as an artist and not just a technician, depending on the canvas on which she's working. Some intuition must come into play.

I could go on with metaphors---the knife as a brush---the gall stone as a jewel (apparently some of them are quite luminous), but I'm going to jump to the patient as poet and write a few lines about the hospital experience, I hope for your reading pleasure. If I miss the mark, blame
it on the drugs.

Hospital Hype

Blanket fed by a vacuum hose
puffs warm air over me...I imagine
floating above 5th Avenue in the
Macy's Christmas Parade...floating
freely, bumping along giddy and gleeful

Suddenly diminished, I am deflated but
not quite
my tethered legs gasp on the bed
inhaling, exhaling
giving me hope
I will rise again.

Next month I will return to semi-sanity and continue writing some
impressions of David Orr's book "Beautiful and Pointless" {A Guide to
Modern Poetry}.

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