Space Dreams

Orbiting the earth in the Starship Enterprise, I imagine I’m sitting proudly in Captain Jean Luc’s captain’s chair seeing on the screen stars shooting and flying past.

The brightest star on my screen is my home planet of earth that glows with fire and water.

My earthly orbit has been within health care systems that welcome people in, with bandaids and phone numbers and send them out to the street 

or to their homes with their families

and in this orbit I find health care has become ‘hurry up and get better’ care ~ “Leave your bed quickly so it is still warm for the next person” care. A system with sliding glass doors that only open on the command of the system, not as easy swinging doors but guarded by sentries of coordinators, clerical workers, nurses and doctors who must take time away from the sick to enter data, handwrite progress notes ~ highly paid secretaries all but enough about the system. 

What about the nurses? 

The people holding on to the front-line

called  angels of mercy 

when the mercy we can dole out

is only by an eye dropper or one tick of the clock 

when we don’t have time provided

to complete our earthly orbits

from sickbed to sickbed 

assessing temperatures and skin conditions,

changing dressings and fluffing pillows

gone flat with the heavy head of sickness. 

In our earthly orbits our feet must keep moving, 

our minds registering the now and the next 

until we push the now into the past and the next becomes now. 

It feels so much better to be orbiting the earth alone

in my captain’s chair ~ the quiet bridge I am sitting on is the stage 

from which I can set a new play on a new day 

outside of the circuitous and busy orbits 

that health care systems have dictated 

to grow into my own health care

with eager wellness in the orbit of community life 

to measure the pace with my pace 

and stay focused on the passions I will still carry 

to bring that orbit into slow while I write them all down

in story or poem or just musing along about my beliefs.

“I will forever be colliding with a billion unnamed

 undiscovered stars, each of us on our own orbital paths.”

~ Sanober Khan, Turquoise Silence