Love Poem to the Terrible Doctors
O play doctor play doctor we are
as antique leaves or Cynthia trees
working our roots toward the great house
where the children sleep with all the lamps
blown out. And you are singing,
which means I am singing, which
means the Cynthia trees must be shaking
even through these long, still days.
The doctor comes into the terrible house
and when he leaves he comes into the trees
and for a terrible moment is the trees.
Which means we were the doctor. And that
is not my life. What I do is live
in the dark with you. And I
will be there with you as the pumpkins
fatten on the vine and the cold sweeps
each precinct with snow. The ice
will change nothing. Doctors of fingernails
doctors of fibulas doctors of the dirty snow.
Before winter is through they will
wade into the snow and draw
their saws of bone and cut us through
although they were never meant to.
Notes:
Charles Wright’s poem “The Bolivar Letters,” from The Grave of the Right Hand, contains the phrase “Play doctor O, play doctor.”
Source: Poetry (January 2021)