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
No comments:
Post a Comment