time and again
those times spent writing
not to loved ones, but to you...
To be a surgeon instead—
there are those times, too.
Yes, I’d like to
give you a warm heart and a chance
for a new lease on life;
or cut your gall bladder and
release the jaundice from your sight.
Or be a psychiatrist to fathom if
you’d do it
to your mother
or
your wife,
or
to your own child
the way you do
it to my patients
when you deny them treatments
to alleviate their plight,
to give hope,
let them feel like humans,
not ICD-9 codes;
or put them through the
one-two-and-you’re-out appeals
you’ll get your ‘doctor’
to decline.
But then...
there are times ahead when
stem cells could penetrate the conscience,
synapse with ethics, compassion, even empathy,
restore, renew, re-humanize—
there are those times, are there not?
Yet would you sign consent,
or remain forever hell-bent
on un-insuring the insured?
And there are times
I write you another letter of appeal...
there
are those times