Today's poem is by Dan O'Brien

The Voices of Doctors
       

ring like seraphim. If minorly parental. The first replied blandly like an
accountant: "Fifty-fifty," he gave me. Like Reagan or the Queen Mum,
he said though he lied. Then the gruff and saturnine surgeon chewing
on a nutrition bar: "We don't yet know what we may find." My wife
yearned to tear his larynx out. His relief post-op; and months later with
the photos, proud of his pink artistry. Then a mensch of an oncologist
who was "immune to poems and plays." Pressed for stats he demurred
yet always with a smile. Then the rapid-firing polymath surgeon who
thought I'd been to war, who set my words to music, whose daughters
I may have taught: "We can save you." "What the hell happened to you?"
asked the gastroenterologist in her saucy drawl, discomfited too—
"You're my age!" Then after the scope: "You're good to go." The nurse
this morning mouths her "congratulations" in deference to the suffering
surrounding us, behind sliding curtains, as she grazes my scars with
gloved fingers. She hurries now because the emergency's elsewhere.

Copyright © 2024 Dan O'Brien All rights reserved
from Flying on Easter
Poetry London Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission