In-Service with Robert Fox, C.P.T.
“Poetic Medicine” Seminar, March 19, 2009
#1: “I hold her hand and I breathe”
I hold her hand and I breathe,
Her skin thinned from years of wear,
Yet fingers strong even with fading warmth.
She breathes once, silence lingers;
I count reaching thirty.
Her chest expands, once, twice.
I count again and I imagine
A girl of 16, 18, what dreams
Now lie dormant,
Which fulfilled, which never grasped
Yet a lifetime lived.
#2: “When someone deeply listens to me”
When someone deeply listens to me,
Tendrils, delicate, weave, probe
The places of softened mortar,
Through my life’s jumbled stone walls.
It is surprise for I am the Listener.
But now those tendrils burrow,
Burrow, not to invade but to invite, to draw
My voice to be a tendril, too, into the
Warmth and light that joins our souls.