She stood every morning
on the corner
near the main entrance
to the hospital,
hissing hostile remarks at passers by.
We gave her that name because,
if armed with a ray gun,
she would have zapped us.
We guessed at her story:
someone she’d loved
had died in the hospital,
the psychiatrist who’d failed her
worked there,
she’d been jilted by a doctor.
We worried about passing exams,
coping with our very first patients.
To distance ourselves
from her insanity,
we embraced it as idiom.
When one of us successfully
sidestepped a pitfall,
we would triumphantly proclaim,
“Zap zhat, Zap Lady!”
Mary E. Moore
Hospital Drive
Summer, 2009
Holding off Death for the old man, fluid-filled tubes.
Watching the encounter, the bright-eyed monitor
ticked off the score –
one parameter against,
another one for.
But Life had forsaken the old man hours ago.
Winning the victory, Death evoked no mystery
not known before –
merely one function less,
one insult more.
Mary E. Moore
The Silent Journey, H. Ely, Editor,
The International Library of Poetry,
Owens Mills, MD, 2004
Cells dividing
Arteries clogged
Hormones raging
Bone marrow mobbed
Work-up slipshod
Records lost
Clerical error
Specimen tossed
Internist smug
Diagnosis obscure
Surgeon knife-happy
Prognosis poor
Drugs galore
Minimal effect
Living will
Benign neglect
Mary E. Moore
Merging Shadows
Community of Poets
Collection Vol 7, 2008
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