poem

ChernobylPre-teen girls all want to know:Why am I always so mad?Why does my heart pound?What is this raging low hum Thrum, like the swarm of beesHoled up in our garage wallThat no one else seems to hear?Of all the things to wonder.Ask me about sedatives, I say,Or the best way to peel an orangeOr how to train for a 5K.Let ’s figure out the rest,All the things that bewilder and vex.One at a time.Sit with me.Take out your mathAnd we ’ll find the greatest common factor.If you have to cry, then cryI ’ll find a box of Kleenex.Let ’s kill some timeAnd match up the missing socksCollected in all these baskets.But don ’t ask me if he really likes you.I don ’t know if he’s here to break your heart.It ’s not for me to say.  It isn ’t just bees;I called my own exterminator, long ago.But it comes in waves.Sometimes it ’s a buffalo stampedeThrough our tidy rows of summer squash,A flash flood trapping you in a desert canyonWhen the banks of the wash are steepest,An avalanche when you're just trying to learn how to ski.Sweet girl, our reactors are unstable,So many things to make us seethe,Always a single miscalculation,A moment of distraction from meltdown;Our own heritable Chernobyl.Get everyone else out,Evacuate.But you, my love, must sit with it.Watch and tend to it,Bathe it in coolant.Try to shorten the half lifeWithout putting it completely out.You ’ll need that fireDown the roadWhen you ’re olderAnd have learned how to loveAnd for all the things th...

Source: Buckeye Surgeon - March 11, 2021 Category: Surgery Authors: Jeffrey Parks MD FACS Source Type: blogs