Poem Published in Copper Nickel

Field Lessons

Dr. D’Amato mused about consciousness and suffering

between his engineering lectures,

apprised parables for me after class hours, once said

that when he thought about his ex-wife,

he remembered how her second toe

was longer than the big one. While he told me this in his office,

he made tea on a plug-in burner,

fed his office plants with a Mott’s Apple Juice jug,

adjusted books on shelves, offered me Meher Baba—

how love works, when God speaks,

how we have not come to teach, but awaken.

That afternoon twittered on until I wished he had curtains

that better covered the snip of light

teething through office windows,

how I wanted to speak up instead of just sitting in a stiff chair,

but he quickly slipped into another story, said:

three army medics were training in Richmond’s

big hospital, assigned to dress gang wounds,

the run of car wrecks and construction trauma,

surly boys wrist deep in sternums and innards,

patching and sewing. A week in,

the soldiers were paged to resuscitate some grandmother.

The battle went on, paddles charged,

needles emptied, but still she died.

Left to toe-tag the lady, these three decided

to rehearse procedures on the body

(hand-over-hand, neck veins tapped, extra potassium).

During their geriatric wisecracks, grandma woke up—

freckled with sensors, draped in an oxygen mask—

and startled these three green berets who couldn’t help but hug her.

They’d patched limbs, but never saved somebody.

My old professor reprised,

wondered out loud if they felt like God,

if they noticed the doctor handing pamphlets to the family

for managing these things—sudden passing

and grief and final arrangements—when all I pondered

was if long second toes can curl, if people can heal.