Trying to Write in a Hospital Lobby

They say you need to find yourself a place
where with your quiet musings you retire
and revelations fly to your embrace
as blackbirds settle neatly on a wire.

Yale-New Haven Hospital won’t do;
a lobby fountain occupies its center --
a splashy noise to soothe those surging through,
and dazzle to distraction all who enter,

as through the splaying atria we roam
our babies and gall bladders to attend,
our addled brains and bones and chromosomes
and wounds and wasted muscles to defend,

finding gift shop, coffee stand, bustling cafeteria;
Christmas tree, milling throngs (whirlwinds of bacteria);
doctors, nurses, patients, parents, valet parkers, volunteers,
Santa hats and badges bobbing; fuzzy puppies, souvenirs,
Flowers for the brave and sobbing, guidance for the wandering,
chapels for the suppliant, counsel for the pondering;

strollers, alcohol dispensers, half-full cups, half-eaten scones,
wheel-chairs, lab coats, vibrations of a thousand phones,
green scrubs, blue scrubs, lab coats, designer Crocs;
hairnets, service dogs, pharma reps and watchful cops;
searchers, lurchers, greeters, sweepers,
Mylar balloons and baffled weepers,
coins thrown in the fountain sinking,
under tumbling water blinking.

~~

Doug Logan, 2018