Articles/Essays – Volume 42, No. 1
Neshutan
Impossible to tally,
The time that a stethoscope
Has draped about my father’s neck.
Years, I am sure.
Just as impossible, to count
The cadence of rhyming ventricles
Or the number of times he entertained
The sounds of Korotkoff,
Indicating systole and diastole.
There is a Kodachrome photograph
Of my father, younger, in 1974 India,
Stethoscope replaced by a large constrictor.
Make thee a fiery serpent,
And set it upon a pole:
. . . that every one that is bitten
When he looketh upon it
Shall live.
My father, a living rod of Asclepius.
Triaging and treating this human condition,
And understanding our Isaiah,
. . . all flesh, is grass . . . ,
My father is certain that we know,
As many as should look upon
That serpent should live,
Even so, as many as should
Look upon the Son of God. . .
. . . might live. . .