Four Poems

by Laura Lippman

CHIAPAS MEDITATION

after Lucie Brock-Broido

At the jungle’s edge,

velvety fur rubs against rough bark.

Claws rake the duff.

Worms till and turn the soil­­––

silking the mud below.

The forest roof peaks

with fractals of dripping ferns,

studded with lichen and

 orchid gaudies.

Quetzal, your tail is a kite;

its emerald glean glistens

through air like a furlough of

glowing gemstone.

Guan-crowned-with-horn,

you perch on the overstory

with honky insolence;

sun haloes the top of you­­­––

a snake glistens forward,

eyeing your neck

with relish.

The last rain falls, drips

refracting light,

drop through dried leaves

on branch banners.

Coveys of rats

climb out of rising waters

to join chachalacas in the canopy––

bait food crowded in the shriveled vortex.

Sisters and Brothers,

your heirlooms have stopped ripening,

and crowds are filled

with flatulence and inorganic matter––

your kingdom deconstructed!

No matter! Let the masses eat cake

or manna from heaven.

Rub your cheek across

silk and tulle

and whatever detritus remains

after the inevitable inundation.

DEAR CLINIC MANAGER

After all these years of fighting and planning

with screech and posture, I’m back,

an elder with blood pressure cresting

& falling in my tsunami of anxiety.

I settle in for vital signs—what? Not yet?

Here I am in the “comfortable” clothes you commanded,

short sleeves for the stress test—a T-shirt! No bra—

for ease of electrode placement—

oh, where is that garment of patient felicity,

the hospital gown, with its blue-and-white

flights of fancy and open front or back

for careful coverage of errant organs?

In this new spirit of liberté, égalité, fraternité,

my beloved and caring, motherly

nurses replaced with swarthy males

and muscly techs with swathes of facial hair.

They’re the same age as my son!

All about efficiency, their attention

to modesty consists of closing the venetian blinds

on windows of the 4th floor, through which

no one outside could possibly see.

They make me pull up and hold my T-shirt

over my head, my chest goose-bumped and bare,

flashed, as they wipe, cleanse, and roughen

skin patches for the leads,

while my sad old midriff and

once-grand boobies droop

under the fluorescent glare for all to see.

A matronly older nurse scoots through

and freshens the pillowcases.

Her extra layers protect her from the cold.

I know the scanner loves the arctic freeze,

but tell that to my cresting blood pressure,

spiking as I shiver.

Couldn’t they have measured it before

the injection of isotope,

so they then wouldn’t have to cause further stress

by threatening to cancel the test,

had I not been able to somehow calm myself,

meditating, breathing, unsqueezing my vessels

to bring the peaking pressure back to earth?

And then what would I have come here for?

To be sent home untested and unrested?

So, Dear Administrator, after all my years of administration

and quality control, I find myself hoisted

on my own petard, reduced to a shrinking

wrinkly and shivering grandma lectured by three buff youth

on exercise-induced nausea I had misidentified

as heart pain in my terror over family failings,

divorce, and misdiagnosed exercise-induced myocardial collapse.

Is it too late for me to rue my own inattention and warn you

to pay attention to the intervention that can undo you?

THE CATASTROPHIST’S DAUGHTER

It was all written

in Dad’s chosen book of the year,

Worlds in Collision.

Flying comets, crashing meteors,

out-of-control asteroids,

dinosaur extinctions,

long-buried mastodons unearthed,

colliding stars, exploding novae.

Hard to sleep

with all these celestial bodies

ricocheting around the galaxy,

probably heading our way…

Even the black holes were deadly.

The patriarch, ensconced in his study,

surrounded by sheaves of paper collected

over a lifetime of seeking answers

to the Greatest Story Ever Told,

his children at his door fighting for a nod.

We struggled to process 

the enormity of the Bomb,

Soviet warheads,

the Cuban Missile Crisis,

and school drills where

we cowered on the hallway floor one year

and under our desks the next year,

depending on the latest survival strategy––

our hands tugging at our heads

while we stared at the polished brown floor.

Without shelters to protect us,

it seemed unlikely we’d make it;

or if we did, who would be outside

when we emerged, just kids?

Without landmarks or parents,

there’d be no way home.

THE LAST ACT

We got our signals crossed

expectation-wise;

first patient in Seattle’s first hospice,

not quite furnished, not quite finished.

Bone-white walls, white bedding, white bed stand,

white fluorescent color of death.

Nothing like the prior week’s TV special

with its lovely, colorful chamber

furnished with soft fabric-covered cushions,

lava lamps, friends, marijuana,

music, and friends in bell bottoms and shawls,

engulfing the departing patient

in groovy love.

It wasn’t like this.

Extricated from the multi-veined rooms

of her cluttered home, crisscrossed

with blue and green lengths

of oxygen tubing which

twisted up and down stairs,

through stacks of books,

jars, cartons, boxes, papers,

and her overflowing ashtrays,

my patient’s in the hospital for

her last act.

Where’s the harp?

she asks breathlessly,

knowing I played.

She looks lost in the empty room,

not a still-life on the wall,

a plant by the door,

or a spread on the bed.

When does the ceremony begin?

she asks, as we wait for the nurse

to check her in.

BIO: Laura is a retired family doctor. Her poems have been published in over 30 publications and she is a co-author of "Writing While Masked, Reflections on 2020 and Beyond".