Volume 18 Number 1 Winter/Spring 2001

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poetry in medicine

Dozens of poets entered their work in the medical center's fourth annual poetry contest. Here we offer two of the poems selected for special recognition by the contest's judges. For information about the next contest, e-mail marian.slattery@medcenter.stanford.edu.

WHAT IF YOU HAD CHANGED YOUR MIND

What if you had changed your mind

and tried to stop the flood waters

that carried season upon season

of a brilliantly effusive life.

The stillness and arcadia charm

under the surface

beckons every cell in your lungs

to breathe in.

Saddled with the bulk of a

cluttered history, you swam.

Perhaps to glimpse a distressed lover,

as seemingly endless, unpolished manuscript,

the brooding dogs,

a thicket of idle paint brushes.

But you of inscrutable words left none.

Did you steal a last glance

above the whispering current?

At the hard edge of a mesa,

the infernal sunset,

an unchoreographed pinyon tree,

before releasing the tether,

to anchor.

Down

into the sediment,

into the quiet,

down

into the quiet of my heart.

J.A. KOLB, RN

ANESTHESIA

is simple

you go to sleep

you wake up

but it is not quite sleep

a drop into blankness

a fall, a swoop

swung out

a curtain

a fogged veil pulled rapidly

you submerge while time wrinkles overhead

and it is not quite waking

though that is closer

many wakings without memory

a slur of lights

a path

the thick dry tongue of reembodiment

voices calling, locating a thaw

you emerge as if from a chrysalis

so it is not quite sleep

and not quite waking

you are different

in between

and after

not so simple.

AUDREY SHAFER, MD

ILLUSTRATIONS: BRIAN CAIRNS

"ANESTHESIA" WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE JOURNAL OF MEDICAL HUMANITIES.