Beyond The Revolving Doors/Rhode Island Hospital,1998 Poem

Beyond the revolving doors
where steel poles and wheelchairs lined
up like sentinels along neatly placed furniture
and wild ivy tangled in ceramic pots,
I waited for a five minute shuttle bus.

It was five minutes to three.
A young blond child with a book bag,
stopped near the glass window
while men with brief cases and long coats
walked past kids crying, and relatives of those dying,
their gaze of darkness hitting you first.

There was a whirring wind of the elevators in motion,
an eerie sound like wind through a tunnel
and a round red button to slow the pace,
doors swung open to the multitude awaiting
my last day on the clinical unit on Neuros

A small index card was folded in my hand,
it read: ‘I love you’ in Prussian,
(some wavy lines and dragged curved marks)
because that massive brick building with sand finish,
adjacent buildings, long corridors, and medical jargon
held more than rooms.