Bedside Poet

Not long ago, I returned to a patient's room to find him sitting on the side of his bed holding a small note, a gift, for me. As he handed it over he said, "I wrote you a poem." Be still my beating heart, a poem.

I suppose earlier in our getting to know one another we happened upon the fact that I had studied poetry in a former life. I'm sure that somehow these little facts about my former life were swindled out of me because I generally don't relinquish such deeply hidden tokens easily. Don't get me wrong; I am proud of my poetry reading (and writing) past. So proud, in fact, that I am careful not to breech that carefully constructed tide-wall to appear prideful. Sometimes, however, I wish I had been afforded the opportunity in my younger years to answer without hesitation or remorse the question, "so what do you do?"

While taking a long walk with a friend and her three huskies today, I stumbled up one side of a mossy bank and she the other in order to avoid a giant mud puddle that had become the entire width of the trail. From the high banks of each side we paused to reflect upon how nice it is to have a career that is, without question, respected. When people ask me what I do today, I reply without hesitation, "I am a nurse." End of story. No "what do you do with that?" or "but what do you want to be when you really grow up?" Nope. None of that. I simply say what I am and it is either the end of the story or a catapult into some medical diatribe about old aunt Ethel who I never knew and hardly care to hear about at the moment.

My friend and I clambered back down the banks to the trail, agreeing that we were lots of things before we were nurses, but somehow those things never amounted to the good old American show stopper when asked the common American question, "what do you do." I was happy to hear that this wasn't bothersome only to me for all those years; like a short-lived two-person support group inviting a "hello my name is Steffanie and I am a former roustabout" and in turn the group in unison, "hello Steffanie" it felt as if my friend and I leaped into the final step of rehab in that moment.

The poem, written on a small white sheet of paper, was given some serious thought, words scratched out and tiny new additions suggesting multiple revisions. Sometimes I hold back a tear when I am at work, or later in the quiet of the night. As I glanced at that tiny note, penned words in black ink, a few short lines relinquished to me, a stranger, a nurse, a poet at the bedside I didn't hold back a tear. I held back the floodwaters of the Mississippi River and kindly smiled, offered a heartfelt "thank you" and slipped the tiny paper into the pocket of my scrubs.

Later, while I was emptying out my scrub pockets, dumping piles of alcohol swabs into my locker, I came upon the poem. Like a solid gold leaflet, I folded it in half and half again, the tiniest gift wrap imaginable, and tucked it into the safety of my folder.

We are a success when we make a real human connection, an emotional connection to another. In effect, our careers, our writing, our song, our faces, our handshake, our art, it all tells the same story, the story of being human; of being a real, emotional, connected human.

Paying it forward: here is a poem I wrote more than a few years ago (in my younger years)...

L E E C H

In a Chequamegon Forest bog,

leeches wait amid methane, muck

& remains for bodies,

flesh and blood,

to trace their new existence

on the skin of others. I canoed there

only once, too often immobile

in tall grasses, reeds,

pond lilies, everything green.

That afternoon, I discovered

a small body & mine

cohabitating. I stood,

almost naked,

by the car window

& watched the reflection

of a round dark spot

on the reflection of my body,

disbelieving either ever

existed alone, imagining

symbiosis. For nearly three weeks

I touched my thigh

where the leech had been; when naked

I searched out mirrors to follow

the imprint of where the leech had been,

of where I thought it had been.

Today, I stand above a rotten log;

a leech reaches out to me. Its body

smooth dark & slick, stretches

from the rotten log upward, toward me

as if in greeting. Maybe

it smells my scent: human

& full of blood.