.
My Last Delivery as Attending Physician
adapting a line from Carl Sandburg
Although she’s labored for eleven hours,
determination freckled on her face
to consummate nine months, she summons powers
inherent in her gender of the race
to introduce another life to air,
and so she bears down through fatigue and pain—
her concentration like a type of prayer,
hope holding her discomfort in disdain.
She gives a final push: an infant cleaves
the expectation in the room asunder,
and faith now sight, a mother’s love perceives
a world filled with beatitude and wonder.
A little girl blinks into primal dawn.
So God has willed the world to carry on.
.
.
Missing in Action
We lived life without living for those years
when you, though not alive, were not yet dead
to us—inhabiting our hopes and fears
more fully than you had inhabited
our thoughts before you vanished. Your O-1
had flown out early from Da Nang one day
to hunt, and failed to come back from its run—
a Bird Dog down or spirited away.
Then after forty years, your plane was found
molding in Laos with remnant bones inside,
though mostly dust. Still, it was solid ground
beneath us that you were identified.
Now freed from our imagination’s lease,
your memory, at last, can rest in peace.
.
.
Duane Caylor is a physician in Dubuque, IA. His poetry has appeared in a number of journals, including First Things, Measure, Slant, and Blue Unicorn.
What a glorious sonnet by a physician in the front row of the arena! God replenishes our fretful faith with daily miracles. A child’s birth as “faith now sight” is awesome.
Thank you so much for letting us read these, Duane! I am literally wide-eyed at how excellent they are! “Hope holding her discomfort in disdain”; “an infant cleaves the expectation in the room” are breathtaking phrases. Your description of the laboring mother, and of the deep heartache of the “Missing in Action” person’s loved ones, reflect the heart of a doctor and poet who loves those who “introduce another life to air”, and those who have “lived life without living.” I was so moved by your poems that I looked up some of your other work in First Things, and read with wonder “Stealing Pears” and “Ruins.”
These are two precious poems relating actual events that inspire. The first, describing the birth of a child, is filled with wonder and achievement while adding a beautiful ending, “God has willed the world to carry on.” “Missing in Action” affected me, because I was involved in POW/MIA recovery and because the remnants of one of my small hometown persons who was a pilot were finally found. Both are stirring poems.
Two poems that strike home. Nicely done, Duane.
I wrote on a similar topic to your missing in action for Armistice / Remembrance Day. Your poem has the added layer that the relatives were still living.
Thanks for the reads, Duane.
I love these well-crafted sonnets, one that speaks of the miracle of life and the hope that comes with it, and one that speaks of the discovery of a long lost loved one and the peace that comes with knowing the truth. Both tap into the very essence of the human condition with creativity, sensitivity, and a tangible honesty. Beautifully done!
The lines of these poems are cut with surgical precision, and the ideas in them shine like burnished platinum. Both were awfully good. I am left wondering whether the girl in the first poem might not be the downed pilot in the second.
“Missing In Action” reminds us of how little was known for how long about men lost at war. Simple yet explicit on friend-and-family feelings as well. The sonnet length, even with your effective resolution, seems to betray the importance of the soul and the extended emotional search.
It’s not that the meter is so clear and well-formed, and not that the rhymes are perfect, too, it’s not that the sentences are not oddly angled to string them all together, but amid all that, the line of thought and progression from scene to scene to conclusion is so well established and natural.
A fascinating effect in the first poem is that when I read it out loud there is a pause, at several line ends, even though in some cases, the punctuation would indicate reading through it without pause — it’s not end stopped or awkward at all — it achieves the effect of labored breathing.
A very cool implementation of “iconic theory,” I’ve recently learned to call it, and yet in perfect meter. Well done, indeed!