Hopkins

 

I was twenty when

I worked at Johns Hopkins;

the medical school, a lab,

mentored by professors,

research funded by

an assortment of sources

(mostly federal.)

 

I saw basic research.

I learned techniques.

I was educated in the what

and why and how of research:

how what we did each day

fit into the jigsaw puzzle

of medical research.

 

That research, that mentorship,

depended on funding

that is being taken away.

Without that start, I’d not have

gone to grad school, 

met the man I married,

had a job in California.

 

Where I worked  

toward a cancer cure—

on federal funds.

We moved the ball a little

toward that goal. Who knows

what we might achieve

if those funds were still there?

 

A poor bargain for us,

for our modern Judas:

trading our future 

for a few pieces of silver.

 

 

The Accident

                 

The Accident

They replaced the sign today at the intersection.

The fire hydrant will take longer,

though not as long as it will take

to change her customary routes—

to the grocery store, the cleaners,

the doctor, the dentist,

to everywhere she goes—

in order to avoid that place.

Her car inevitably backs out of the driveway,

inevitably turns to the left,

to the inevitable turn at the corner

where she would see the place where

the axis of her world changed.

 

She would see it happen again,

again the late-to-work speed of the oncoming car,

the desperate swerve,

(her little boy)

the toppled car, the scream,

and the horribly silent moment

before the sirens.

 

In the morning, instead,

she walks the block

and touches the cold metal signpost

instead of his warm cheek.

Memory

 

Memories are mysteries:

a song, a sight, a sound

prompting a sleeping nerve cell

toward a synapse

harboring the past—

resurrecting, restoring

an emotion, a response, a re-creation

of another time and place,

re-visiting, re-living my life

again, and yet

again.