Month: July 2013

Preoccupied

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passion

julytable

Who would have thought it possible that a tiny little flower could preoccupy a person so completely that there simply wasn’t room for any other thought.
~ Sophie Scholl 

This time of year I can’t seem to form any other thoughts beyond appreciation for the beauty on each stem and the fragrance that wafts from heliotrope and roses through an open window.  I might just fall head-long into the dark center of a flower like Alice into the rabbit hole and not find my way back.

Are there other thoughts that matter?

yelloworange

lilycentral

orange

yellow

Against the Hard Edges

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

In all the woods that day I was
the only living thing
fretful, exhausted, or unsure.
Giant fir and spruce and cedar trees
that had stood their ground
three hundred years
stretched in sunlight calmly
unimpressed by whatever
it was that held me
hunched and tense above the stream,
biting my nails, calculating all
my impossibilities.
Nor did the water pause
to reflect or enter into
my considerations.
It found its way
over and around a crowd
of rocks in easy flourishes,
in laughing evasions and
shifts in direction.
Nothing could slow it down for long.
It even made a little song
out of all the things
that got in its way,
a music against the hard edges
of whatever might interrupt its going.
~John Brehm “Passage”

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

Palmed Off on the Unwary

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blackcurrant

Nothing seems to please a fly so much as to be taken for a currant;
and if it can be baked in a cake and palmed off on the unwary, it dies happy.
~Mark Twain

Returning to clinic after time off for a summer break, I worry I’m like a fly hiding among the black currants hoping to eventually become part of the currant cake.  Just maybe no one will notice I don’t quite fit back in.

In thirty three years of practice, even after bearing three children and going through several surgeries, I’ve not been away from patients for more than twenty consecutive days at any one time.  This is primarily out of my fear that, even after a few weeks, I will have forgotten all that I’ve ever known and if I were to actually return to see patients again, I would be masquerading as a physician rather than be the real thing.   A mere fly among the currants palmed off on the unwary.

Those who spend their professional lives taking care of others also share this concern if they are truly honest: if a patient only knew how much we don’t know and will never know, despite everything we DO know, there would really be no need for us at all, especially in this day and age of accurate (and some terribly inaccurate) medical information at everyone’s fingertips.  Who needs a physician when there are so many other options to seek health care advice, even when there are a few flies mixed in?

As I walk back into an exam room to sit with my first patient after my time away, I recall over thirty years of clinical experience has given me an eye and an ear for subtlety of signs and symptoms that no googled website or internet doc-in-the-box can discern.  The avoidance of eye contact, the tremble of the lip as they speak, the barely palpable rash, the fullness over an ovary, the slight squeak in a lung base.  These are things I am privileged to see and hear and make decisions about together with my patients.  This is no masquerade; I am not appearing to be someone I am not.  This is what I’m trained to do and have done for thousands of days of my life.   No need for the unwary to fear.

The hidden fly in the currant bush of health care may be disguised enough to be part of the cake that an unwary patient might gobble down to their ultimate detriment — but not this doctor.  I know I’m the real thing, perhaps a bit on the tart side, but offering up just enough tang to be what is needed.

And I will die happy doing this.

 

 

Bugged

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thistlebugsSometimes I’d get mad because things didn’t work out well, I’d spoil a flapjack, or slip in the snowfield while getting water, or one time my shovel went sailing down into the gorge, and I’d be so mad I’d want to bite the mountaintops and would come in the shack and kick the cupboard and hurt my toe. But let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.
~Jack Kerouac

The little things can bug us.  In fact, like a thistle covered with aphids which entices ants,  we can be bugged on top of bugs. Yet we still bloom.

But we are on notice.  The bugs do exult in our flawed flesh,  a reminder of our vulnerability and short stay on this good earth, bugs and all.  

The rest is all glorious, right down to the roots that hold us fast.  thistleaphids

The Bench of Miracles

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bench

bench6

They sat on a bench, held hands, and told each other their stories hour after hour.  They were not lonely anymore.  They had found and been found by their 100% perfect other.  What a wonderful thing it is to find and be found by your 100% perfect other.  It’s a miracle, a cosmic miracle.
~Haruki Murakami

It makes sense to simply be with each other, telling our stories and holding hands.  A bench is just such place to be.

I’m not sure there exists a 100% perfect other for each one of us but sitting together on a bench in a beautiful place when nothing and no one is more important makes an almost perfect other 100% perfect.

That is the miracle of the bench.

Just come and sit a spell.  I’ll tell you my story and you tell me yours and we become perfect together.

bench2

bench3

Stirred for a Bird

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photo by Kate Steensma
photo of a young kestrel falcon by Kate Steensma

The Windhover
To Christ Our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing.

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins

photo by Kate Steensma
photo by Kate Steensma
photo by Kate Steensma
photo by Kate Steensma

 

Daisies’ Dance

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sunsetgrasss
See, the grass is full of stars,
Fallen in their brightness;
Hearts they have of shining gold,
Rays of shining whiteness.
Buttercups have honeyed hearts,
Bees they love the clover,
But I love the daisies’ dance
All the meadow over.
Blow, O blow, you happy winds,
Singing summer’s praises,
Up the field and down the field
A-dancing with the daisies.
~Marjorie Pickthall “Daisy Time”
daisytime
sunsetdaisysunsetvetch