From the spiritual shadow realms of “Loretta” and the melancholic lyricism of “Pronouncing Maria” to the pathos of “A Simple Heart” and the prescient trans-humanist Future poem “Poem for the Year 3,000” to the haunting photo-scape epitaph of “Seeing Mussolini’s Mistress” and profound existential angst of “Code Blue,” this collection reveals a 21st century surgeon-poet’s journey into umbral netherworlds of the human condition.
and I went, among the living and dying, speaking of love unafraid.
The L Word
The L Word
Dare I say it out loud?
Might not every bird become forever mute on hearing its sweeter sound? Could I bear the blame for that?
Or, by opening a cage of silence, and giving it voice, would it fly away and never return?
And if, sculpted by signs from my hands, might it fall and shatter into sand? How would I piece it together again?
Revelations came from a poem, and I went, among the living and dying, speaking of love unafraid.
Places Poets Need Not Go
I've been where poets need not go:
Detached a friend’s eyes for the blind And observed a mother's cancer grow
Extirpated a malignant breast, Opened a chest, massaged a heart
Kept hospital vigil over a dying child, And closed an infant’s intestinal gunshot holes
Stood helpless next to a suicidal patient With a crossbow arrow through his head
Reached deep into a storm-swept red lake And felt a smashed liver go cold.
Pulled back a trauma victim from leaving Though an open door leading into nevermore
I’ve gone where poets need not go, And returned, more poet than I know.
Loretta So small, this world could not Hold her in its absent arms, Held now like a shadow
Cradled by a crescent moon. She died, unlike Christ, behind walls, On a morphine drip, letting go Her nail-polish-pink imploded destiny.
She loved, and was loved, Opening like a rose
To all her knew her.
And I think of her
When a Whippoorwill sings, Remembering a more beautiful girl From a less beautiful world.
Pronouncing Maria
How shall I pronounce you? Me, the surgery
Resident called to examine you at 4:43 a.m.
In the dead of winter, after you were gone. Your ballerina-lithe body left lying here, Like the unstrung Spanish guitar
Standing against the get-well card clustered wall, Still echoing sorrow, wind, and the novia rose
Solitary-red leaning over the nightstand's green vase
Near your bobbed brunette hair, as if
To whisper into your pearl ear ringed ear
Dance, once more…
But your fawn-thin legs that once flamenco-pranced And little, cupped Latina hands that passion-clapped Now lie covered by a white, hospital sheet
As new fallen snow on a darkened cobblestone street Mutes the clacking of pony steps into silent castanets.
And from your window overlooking Lincoln Park
I counted twelve pallid-amber streetlamps, Birthday-candle glowing in the blue predawn snow. I closed my eyes, made a wish, and left, Like a flame, extinguished by your closing door.
Poem for the Year 3,000
To you who may still be human, I come to your Future
Like a stray bullet Shot from a drunken Past, Unapologetic for what I was, and am:
A vulgar voice from a darker time Of disease, death, and war
These words No match for your mathematics
My quantum of love Without equations to measure
And yet, I think of you and wonder. What angel emerges from this mortal chrysalis?
Code Blue
I. Wiring of the Feet
Raven-perched upon a precipice of pain
Overlooking crystal-latticed cityscape human specters
Lonesome-pulsed homeward toward nuclear suburbs
I threnody-sing of V migratory geese
And the peregrine falcon’s downward slope..
A lifetime’s could-have-beens intersecting you and me.
Someone touched my shoulder, Come with me,
And I followed into the Route 66 Milky Way midnight
Solitary driver, expressway-embracing Siren hymns
Lullaby-echoing down the Arkansas hills,
Cb gibberish-squelched airwaves' white noise
18 wheeler asphalt-arias hissing high C’s
Ghost chorused by phantom-diner waitress laughter
Coffee-counter hushed by quarter tips' spinning silver, And oblivious to that nightshade music, drove on.
2 A. M. On the horizon a tornado approaches,
Motion without motion, molecular heart of matter.
A hospital overhead voice codes Lazarus, Room 222
Quail flushed air’s recoiling silent goodbye
Oxygen insufflated lungs, electrolyte cellular oceans
EKG leads, wired around wrists and ankles
Epinephrine small hands injected into veins
Defibrillator's brute mule-kick to the chest
Pulse-less body convulsed from the bed
Gelatinous fish-eyed staring into nothingness
Near the nightstand’s green-vase red tulip
Exhaling Christmas scents of the Netherlands.
II. The Arrest Called Off
There will be no spring this year, No year this zero season;
Only flower Death’s mute dialect
Inflected with the cadence of a fading kiss
And all memory, reenactment of sorrow
When of our blood spilled on the ground
Unless there, where a hyacinth blooms, Green hope becomes sun bound.
Man of all times, places, names,
Yours was the primeval pool’s rippled human reflection.
With your face disfigured by cancer surgery
I love you
With your tracheostomy necklace
With your Pseudomonas-green wound
With your fear of hemorrhage from the neck
Your head, bald from chemotherapy
Ulcerated lips, painful mouth, eating through a straw
Surrounded by your kindergarten get-well cards
With the terror-ball snowballing in your kidney
With your hands uplifted in prayer
I love you
With your disjointed Alzheimer’s disconnected
Fading memory's this-and-that broken bric-a-brac
With your body, prostrate in sacrifice
I love you
With your burning-brain’s starry astrocytoma
Epileptic wrist, limp-posed on your thigh
Crohn’s fistula-abscessed buttocks
Arms' basilic veins, scarred from drugs
Leaky mitral valves, Purkinje plexus arrhythmias
Neglected myocardial muscle, deteriorating ventricles
With your tricuspid’s ragged chordae tendineae
Aneurysmal aorta's lethal detonation
Amniotic silence, belly pregnant with malignant ascites
Alien-protein studded liver, dysplastic cervix
With your melanoma's prophetic satellitosis
Colon’s neoplastic apple core
Larva infested lung, herniated sensibility
Laryngeal erosion, tattered esophagus
Deadly coalescing breast pearl
Pallid child, gagging up gastric Ascaris Lumbricoides
Huntington’s erratic choreiform gesticulations
Your MS eyes blind turning toward darkness
I love you.
Turn out the light.
III. Removal of the Body
Soul: origami-folded fire, angel wing blazing
Above the kneeling hearts of mortal love.
Not man as cadaver, nor machine
Nor pimp, money, nor organ
Nor God, animal, nor less-than-nothing
Nor filth, occupation, nor carbohydrates, or fat
Nor water, android, food, or ignominy, nor killer
Nor enemy, broken spirit, nor lie, nor devil.
Shall I curse in front of the kids?
Let you eavesdrop on this soliloquy?
Read my love letters, publish my diary?
Confess my sins, my mea culpas, tell all…?
Denounce life with a smirk?
Jar-display my youth in formaldehyde?
Speak plainly when you are not plain?
Slur my words when you despise drunks?
Take the photo, paint the picture
Speak the monologue, act the part
Mold the Earth, say the word
Spark the soul, write the story
Sing the song, dance the dance.
IV. The Burial
Be still, my recombinant heart, be still; Louder drums beat unheard.
The cocoon-entombed butterfly
Will yet give itself up to the sky, Sphinx moth to the night
Galaxy-lost in spiral-litany constellations,
The cicada, sequestered in brown muscle Earth
Emerges again to sing its dirge, And Phoenix, fire-born of water
From its ashes will rise.
Martyr relic, suffered visage
Mother fish, Father of the Lake
Disciple of waves, reverie warrior
Oarsman of winter seas, Zen angler
Indelible hope, exponential guilt
Carnal acquiescence, sentient fire
Intercalated facade, entropic lust
Conjoined pendant, lacuna trabeculae
Velocity of love, pampiniform open road
Phlegmatic eruption, emphysematous laugh
Fame trajectory, formula of desire
Soul compass, geometry of jealousy
Curve of yes, angle of no
Fascicular wheat, panoramic muons
Exponential guilt, vertebral architecture
Bruised sensibility, corrugated cerebellum
Transcendent rocket, perpetual saguaro
Transfusion of light, scintillating comet
River-bank germinal footprints, implanted millennia
Fossil god-face, ultra-structure of lost civilizations.
Intersection of hunter and hunted
This is the hour of our love.
Shall no one pray for this brother, Sister in time, their Past our Future; Sleepers, deaf to all farewells?
V. Epitaph
Children measure our hope, singing in the night; Cantatas, wind-carried through the cherry trees Cleansing us in its river of song.
We grow as the corn grows, Witness to witnesses, perennial resurrection of stone Up from the throats of doves Rising voice of a thousand flutes Verdant tasseled rustling in the wind
Mother Earth sun feathered hair Emerging like green arrows from the martyred soil
Antennae, receiving signals from stars Foretelling of legends yet to be.
I Denounce You, Death
I, the one, self-incarnate voice of the Present
Renounce the worm, squirming in your brain
Reject you, science without love
Deny you, smirking executioner of innocents
Refuse your hand, helping kids into boxcars
Banish you to Soul, without parole
Dismiss you with One command: Christ
Condemn you to an empty space caged inside a circle of life
And when the Future-sarcastic snicker “So where’s this insolent poet now?”
Let them look to the night sky, for an * nearest the (moon.
Simple Heart
You and me, 32, 33, alone, discussing mastectomy. I asked about your paperback Madame Bovary, a difficult read, you said, and I agreed, suggesting, perhaps, as a better start, Flaubert’s A Simple Heart
After surgery, and adjuvant chemo-radio therapy, you returned, sobbing that hubby called you repulsive and how papa said to be more understanding as he was having a hard time, and then you cried again love turned its back on you.
And the last time, I came to see you on your birthday, in the hospital where you slept, intubated, morphine dripped, chest-tubed, arms outstretched, wrist-restrained to the railings; no longer the object of a cruel joke, but now angel winged, and Paraclete ascendant.
Cousin Richard
I inquired about you at the Bureau of Lost Souls but they had no record of your being found nor your alias, Man of Mystery; no clue as to your whereabouts last seen as a brilliant mind burning too brightly without your medication and soiling your pants before the family in the kitchen last heard from on a street corner exhorting strangers to beware of imminent extraterrestrial arrivals thru amalgams in their molars.
Rumor was, you drowned in alcohol but you only drank milk and always said that’s why your smile was so beaver-white that you’d been killed on Route 66 on a motorcycle but it was your brother Albert, 21, who was decapitated on one when you were 13 and that you ended up like your mom Aunt Mary, a month after her shock treatments, inexplicably found dead on grandma’s porch by the Tuscan-baritone egg man at sunrise.
How strange, after all these winters, I should think of you, Ritchie, and late Sunday night write this poem.
Nijinsky
Danseur quadriceps flexed; he leaps to stars
And remains, comet-suspended among them:
Constellation Panther, descending contoured muscle-night, Devouring shadows black silk blindfolded over your eyes,
Absorbing The power dance unleashed before you.
And all at once he is Faun: seduction
Crouched within himself; red music flames
Lust-engulfing Nymphs leaf-flickering silhouettes
Trembling the late afternoon darkening woods,
Falling asleep, dreaming as puppet Petrushka
Propped up by willow branches, swaying in the wind,
Head bowed, gazing upon a marionette maker's mark
Carved in his thigh, arboreal amazed and woodgrain
Perplexed by the bold Sartorius S engraved in the name.
Pride Before the Fall
Pride comes before the fall.
That seems true enough, after all, I’ve lived an aortic life and raced to America's murder capital driving a fiery red Testarossa at 110, blaring AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” to help save a life shot 17 times at 3 A.M. got home and went back again.
But that’s old hat, replaced now by a cat-in-the-hat poet’s head, realizing this poem + $8 will buy me one glorious veinte quad breve latte.
Late-Night Cinema Extraordinaires
Life-searching lonely ghosts they float across the b & w screen, gray-gowned, tuxedo-chalked, playing pretend make-believe never breaking character to complain about a blister from a shoe too small or squeeze from a corset too tight. those passed-on, come back tonight reliving this waking electronic dream where the popcorn tastes stale and feels wet-cardboard soggy, mildewy on hands dealt from an antique Viennese poker deck cut by mothball-whiffed naphthalene and musty old rummage clothes waltzing with me
King of Clubs, couched in the dark holding a fading Queen of Hearts, glow-faced watching old movie epitaphs silver flashing S.O.S.
Sea Anemone
From the flower's mouth flows music:
Liquid whispers murmuring mellifluous lullabies
Mermaid-poured into dreams of sailors lost at sea
Blue-hair floating entangled in Sargasso gulfweed
Fimbria-combed by slender pink fingers
Undulating to the rhythmic tide
Sentient-delicate tendrils quivering
Star-glistening memories embraced by currents
Swooning mute onto deaf-shell auricles
Static-scattered on the silent ocean floor
Secrets, kept locked in a conch
Breathing damp against your ear:
White noise of a Siren's voice,
Cold, cryptic, calling you to listen…
Fame Fame clamors for the crowd's acclaim, and once attained, fades with the last applause.
You shout your name, and what remains is an echoed silence: the Future, come back to you like a dog without its bark unable to warn you of fire ignited by a cancer spark. And the question keeps bouncing back like a red rubber ball; What was that all about, after all?
Urban Front, Devil's Night
Surgeon’s Trauma Journal entry: 2047 Anno Domini, 0200 hours
Patient X: Admitting Diagnosis: Multiple gunshot wounds.
Pre-op Diagnoses:
Multiple GSW x 17: bilateral chest, right upper arm, right lower arm, right zygoma, right anterior thigh, right lateral thigh, right lower abdomen, hypogastrium, left upper quadrant, right hypochondrium, left lower quadrant, suprapubic abdomen, right hip, left axilla, lumbar region.
Post-Op Diagnoses:
Bilateral hemopneumothorax thoraces, multiplesmall bowel perforations, colon perforation,rectal injury, bladder injury, penetrating liver injury, splenic injury, gallbladder perforation, gastric perforation, hemoperitoneum, retroperitoneal hematoma, right femur fracture, superficial femoral artery injury, zygomatic arch fracture, multiple muscle hematomas, pancreatic hematoma, perinephric hematoma.
Procedure:
Emergency exploratory laparotomy, multiple small bowel enterorrhaphies, colorrhaphy, splenorrhaphy, Hartmann procedure, retroperitoneal exploration, cystorrhaphy, cholecystectomy, gastrorrhaphy, bilateral thoracostomies, brachial/saphenous venous cut downs, radial arterial line placement, bilateral subclavian catheter placement.
Brief history:
Young unknown male brought into the E.R. by paramedics, in extremis and unresponsive. B.P. 60/0. Intubatedupon arrival. Cervical collar/spine board,with Velcrocompressionvest andMAST trousers on. Left pupil reactive to light. Right eye grossly intact (not readily visualized secondary to periorbital hematoma).
Brachial and saphenous cut downs performed, followed by insertion of large bore cannula (direct I.V. tubing) and bag-compressed rapid instillation of multiple liters of Lactated Ringer’s solution, followed by multiple units of O neg. blood (followed by fresh frozen plasma, platelet transfusions in the O.R. to obviate thrombocytopenic bleeding diathesis). Broad spectrum systemic antibiotics administered. Chest x-ray revealed a missile in each pleura, consistent with pneumo-hemothoraces without proximity to thecardiacsilhouette.Plainx-rays of the abdomenrevealed multiple bullet fragments, as well as extensive buckshot in the right lateral abdomen extending to the right mid upper abdomen. A bullet was seen in the midline abdomen at the L1-L2 level. Lateral view, possible vertebral spinal canal region. Head and neck plain films unremarkable, except for bullet fragment in the right zygoma. Rt. midshaft femur fracture noted and Ortho consulted.
In the operative suite MAST compression vest and pants were judiciously decompressed to avoid hypotension. Patient was carefully moved from the spine board onto the operating table. With the patient in the Trendelenburg position, bilateral subclavian catheters were placed, cannulapenetrating the clavipectoral fascia and anchoring the catheters with 2-0 silk. Bilateral chest tubes were placed laterally at the 5th intercostal spaces, anchored, and connected to suction. Chest tube blood loss Rt. 600 c.c. Lt. 400 c.c. B.P.100/60. CV surgeon consulted. Warming blanket placed and labs drawn. Nasogastric tube and Foley catheter placed, gross hematuria. Rt. radial arterial cutdown line placed.
Examination:
GSW: bilateral chest, right upper arm, right lower arm, right zygoma, right anterior mid-thigh, right lateral and medial thigh, right lower abdomen (shotgun) with extruding bowel contents and greater omentum, hypogastrium, left upper quadrant, left lower abdomen, suprapubic abdomen, right hip, hypochondrium, left axilla, and palpable entrance wound lumbar region. Heart/lung sounds were readily audible. Digital rectal exam revealed blood. Arterial Dopplers of the right popliteal, distal dorsalis pedis and posterior tibialis were absent (audible on the left) suspect for femoral injury. A vascular surgeon was consulted who explored Hunter's canal, finding a superficial femoral artery disruption, and repairing the artery with an interposition saphenous vein graft, concomitantly while the laparotomy was in progress (see his report).
Technique:
With the patient in the Trendelenburg position, the chest, abdomen, and extremities were prepped and draped in a sterile fashion. A midline vertical incision was made from the xyphoid to the symphysis pubis, entering the peritoneal cavity. Massive hemoperitoneum was suctioned expeditiously. Intestinal contamination was widespread. A self-retaining Bookwalter retractor was strategically placed and lap. sponges used generously. Extruded bowel was reduced from the abdominal wound. Exploration revealed multiple perforations of small intestine, including the jejunum and distal ileum. No aortic or iliac injury. Multiple small perforations from the buckshot were also identified along the duodenum and pancreas associated with hematoma formation,
Multiple mesenteric disruptions were noted, and hemostats placed, and vessels tied off and hemoclipped. Multiple enterorrhaphies and small bowel resections were performed using stapling devices. Smaller perforations were sutured. Patient hemodynamically stable with a B.P. 120/80. No further significant abdominal blood loss. Thoracostomy tube blood loss abated. CV opinion: thoracotomy not indicated at this time.
Hepatic parenchymal injury noted in the supero-lateral liver and a hole in the gallbladder fundus. Cholecystectomy was performed, after identifying the gland of Lund and the Triangle of Calot, clipping off the cystic artery and duct, mobilizing the gallbladder from the liver bed and Bovie electro-cautery achieving hemostasis. Kocher maneuver was performed exploring the hematoma of the head of the pancreas to R/O occult duodenal perforation. An occult duodenal perforation was noted and repaired with 3-0 chromic and silk suture.
The gastrocolic greater omentum was then taken down exploring the lesser sac and posterior stomach. No posterior gastric perforations were noted. The greater curvature and anterior stomach holes were closed with staples after dividing the gastroepiploic arcade with a stapling device. Splenic hematoma and laceration were present. Laparotomy sponges were placed in the left subdiaphragmatic space, and gastrosplenic and lieno-renal ligaments taken down. The splenic pedicle was intact. Splenorrhaphy with omental wrap was successfully performed. Diaphragms appeared normal.
Retroperitoneal hematoma along inferior vena cava negative for caval injury. Two kidneys palpable. Right perinephric hematoma around Gerota's fascia explored and no renal injury. Ureters intact. Perforations were present in the ascending and transverse colon. Colorrhaphies performed with stapling instruments.
The white line of Toldt was mobilized along the ascending colon to R/O occult retroperitoneal colon perforations. Bladder dome perforation identified and closed. No injury to the uretero-pelvic junction. The descending colon was explored revealing a large pelvic retroperitoneal hematoma extending below the peritoneal reflection, raising a high index of suspicion for rectal injury. Hartmann procedure was then performed, staple-dividing the descending colon and doublestapling the distal rectal stump, exteriorizing the stapled sigmoid through the left lower quadrant rectus abdominis as acolostomycross-clampedwith Kocherclamps. Theabdomenandright lower abdominal GSW wound where bowel had protruded were closed with continuous mono suture and skin stapled.
The entire peritoneal cavity was lavaged with multiple liters of warm sterile saline, flushing out contaminants as well as possible. Retrieved bullets were sent to pathology. Jackson-Pratt drains were placed along the pancreatic bed, right lateral liver space and pelvis. Right leg splint placed and femur fracture Rx. to follow up per orthopedic consultant. Extremity wounds explored, and not significant, with brachial and radial pulses present. Instrument and sponge count correct. EBL 30 units. Sterile dressings and appropriate peristomal sterile Vaseline gauze in place. The patient was taken to the recovery room in hemodynamically stable condition, having tolerated the procedurerelatively well,movingupperextremities but not his legs.Thepatient will betransferred to the ICU after serial labs and appropriate postoperative consultations, including neurologic and neurosurgical, with CT of spine to R/O the possibility of spinal cord injury. Total operative time 8 hours, 17 minutes. Time to write a poem.
After Reading William Harvey's Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et
Sanguinis in Animalibus
Red-River rafting erythrocyte cerulean-bathed in pre-dawn violet
inferior vena cava rushing towards a superior-cava confluence estuary
I Chianti-poured into the right atrium splashed over tricuspid falls
right-ventricular salmon propelled up the pulmonary artery
windswept-billowed by alveolar freshets sailing along vortex-rivulet swirling eddies
pulmonary venous waterfalls, cherry-spilled flooding the left atrium
cascading down mitral rapids left-ventricular locked and loaded
shot-out pulsatile through an aortic canon, coming to rest in calm-backwater capillary creeks, and wanting to go on the ride again.
Dr. Moreau
He lived with imperfection staring at his own reflection distorted by an aesthetic of changing beast into beauty without an anesthetic becoming a legend in his own mind, experimenting like a god gone blind from whose fumbling finger's labors came chimeras and their progeny of strange androgyny, turning his dreams into DNA nightmares' unraveling anarchy leaving him with a waking vision: twelve gazelles, cloned with Narcissus, gazing into a pool; them, his crowning achievement, him, their king of fools.
Seeing Mussolini’s Mistress
No hand holds hers, not dad’s that took the pope's pulse Sunday morning and her to the zoo in the afternoon when she was five, strolling past the roaring lions that made her cry nor her lover's she reaches for, left empty-handed in an empty sky; once, standing by him in life now, hanging by him in death from a gas station girder, by her ankles bound with rope and someone in the mob, maybe a Christian, secured the black skirt around Clara’s thighs to hide her womanhood from the mob, and brute, hoisting her hips up onto his shoulders, sniffing the jasmine, lingering behind her ears
maybe a Roman Catholic who covered her from the gawking martyr descendants of those once witnessed by pagans savoring slaughter in the Coliseum, now partisans and parents who lost their children, froth-mouthed shouting for retribution, certain the puttana got less than she deserved less than Cleopatra, breast-fanged by an asp, Antoinette, head-spilled into a basket, or Magdalene, spared a stoning’s fate, and this photograph-epitaph:
STEP FORWARD, YOU WITHOUT SIN, AND TIE THE FIRST KNOT
Hospital
Rounds: Phlegmasia Cerulea Dolens
When physician-requested to reveal her disease
She slowly pulled up the handkerchief-red quilt
Concealing her aging blueberry-stained aching legs
That once young-danced the Polka Barefoot-white bathed by July moonlight
Through thick grass down to a muddy beach.
And all at once, seemed like a girl
About to go wading, lifting her skirt, Just above the knees.
Doll Collection
Like miniature wax-museum figures they slowly turn their eyes towards you looking for answers to their jamais vu here in the upstairs apartment above the San Francisco Bay fog rolling in below.
And you explain, you don't know, not being a hypnotist who can awaken mannequins by a clap from your hands that played with them when you, too, were little.
And on hearing a foghorn's low tuba moan, they turn inward, deep inside themselves, black eyes rolling back like sharks on attack, leaving you with a sense of déjà vu you had tortured one of them before.
Doppelganger
When you sleep, I live your other life, Lantern-illuminating honeycombed catacombs
Abuzz with martyr bones
Whispering to lost loved ones in the dark; Broken-heart pendant counterparts, ebony cross
Crucifix on burnt sienna endometrial walls
Closing in, smothering all that might have been...
And I watched you again tonight, but you
Didn’t notice the Scandinavian Harvest Moon
Peeking through the Halloween-cirrus clouds
Changeling-moving silently outside your window
And my gaze, imprisoned in its midnight mirror.
Pull back the chestnut-hair curtain
From your face, and see me, sister.
Grimmer Fairy Tales
The real world has enough terror for more than seventy times seven dungeons dragons and damsels in distress, prisons, suicide bombers, Rwanda victims and serial killers sick in the head.
Never mind Hansel and Gretel, gumdrop-roofed gingerbread houses and kind old ladies offering Angel food cake. One missing little one is one too many one can tolerate.
Put on the back burner, witches, covens, and ovens opened for special guests.
Pay no attention to Snow White's faux heart porcine in a box; transplants, cloning, and the catch-me-if-you-can man, eaten by a fox.
Go colorblind to Little Riding Hood's Red and the grinning yellowed teeth she saw. There's more black & white that meets the eye in grandma's pink shawl’s concealed lupine paw
Some unnatural tales are told to frighten And only natural to seek refuge in a poem.
