The Room Exhaled Before I Did
The patient sat before me on the table
Clearly hoping that I would be able
To return his life to normalcy
As I treated his malignancy.
The tension in the room was palpable.
The worry in his eyes indelible.
His voice was barely able to conceal
The anxiety I knew was real.
Then I gently gave a treatment plan
Stressing positives as best I can.
His confidence in me no longer hid,
And so the room exhaled before I did.
Ponderings on the Beach
Sitting on the beach, on a calm and sunny day,
While taking in the blue waves as the seagulls move away,
Pondering my life, I ask, “What has it meant to me?”
My short time here on earth versus all eternity.
Were my actions merely fleeting footprints on the shore?
Clear at first but quickly washed away forever more.
Or perhaps I made my mark, done more than what I should,
Yet I’m thinking, “Was there some way greater that I could?”
I need to reconcile the frequent messages I send
With why it is I’m here on Earth, and also to what end.
Did I contribute lasting value to humanity
Or spend my precious time and life concerned with only me?
I do not know that I am now prepared to answer this,
As stark reality may yet distort my present bliss.
But yet I take some comfort in the life that I have led,
Not pursuing greed but rather selflessness instead.
So grateful and enthusiastic I have spent my days
Living, loving, working, playing in so many ways.
Enjoying what life offered me while striving for the best,
Before surrendering to time and its eternal rest.
So, after all of this I need an answer all my own.
What have I done while here on Earth? Indeed what have I sown?
What can I offer to explain what it has been to be
This person I inhabited who turned out to be me?
Richard Lackman is an orthopaedic cancer surgeon and poet.
That’s a fine final line for “The Room,” Dr. Lackman. I can feel the exhalation happening before you come to the end of your positive treatment plan. But for “Ponderings on the Beach,” where you need that answer all your own, the patient and companions and staff can’t contribute so much. Keep pondering! You’ve expressed the questions in good rhyme and rhythm.
Margaret, thanks for your reply snd your support. It means a lot.
Your ponderings are profound and so relatable, Richard. Thanks for this!
Hope – that most treacherous of emotions. But how could we cope without it?
And in the second poem you ponder that great, unanswerable question of legacy. Well, these poems will be around after you’ve gone, Richard.
Thanks for the reads.