Visit to the Veteran's Hospital: San Francisco by Peter Menkin
by Peter Menkin Visit to the Veteran's Hospital: San Francisco Just last year a friend from Church passed away at the Veteran's Hospital in San Francisco. I wrote this poem some years ago, after visiting "Fort Miley", San Francisco and seeing the sketches of soldiers on one hallway wall--in black ink by artists. I wanted to do something, too. So this poem which was originally workshopped on The Atlantic Monthly Writer's Workshop, which is no longer extant. That was around 2000. by Peter Menkin The fog sits and lives by the City Where men with their sketches made by nursing friends to strangers, linger on the walls and in the memories. Anonymous lessons of Caesar campaigns, and American victories of elegant tours, in journeys from many armies are adorned by men with injuries tended. This on the caverns and hallways punctuated by building clinic, hospital, Nursing Home, Ambulatory Center for Veterans in San Francisco by the Pacific. Limbs, lives, bodies nurtured with desparite routine in diversity, of legions in regular staff to administer the chapel of balm to war injured. Oh, boy, I saw the men today and the women when visiting the line at the Veteran's Hospital, Oh Boy. I heard the news today, saw the results. Care and treatment offered: Tender mercies given with discipline, received with gratitude, politics, and golden hearts with purple glory in sketches of lines of color in living faces. A kind of memorial to wounded. These, Oh, Boy, I read the news today of American faces mingling comraderies in wounded attention, ministrations of, Oh, Boy, the agony was apparent in the quiet. The fog rolls through the Golden Gate in the City where the houses in their colored array sit cheek to jowl; the men talk of Senators and Officers, wait for prosthetics. Oh, Boy, there is God who is around the corner, down the hall. I read the news today in the vastness and hub bub to display a sketch of tenderness. Audio reading by the poet is found here: http://www.archive.org/details/VeteransHospitalSanFranciscoByPeterMenkin Peter Menkin, an aspiring poet, lives in Mill Valley, CA USA where he writes poetry. He is an Oblate of Immaculate Heart Hermitage, Big Sur, CA and that means he is a Camaldoli Benedictine. He is 64 years of age as of 2010. Copyright Peter Menkin http://www.petermenkin.blogspot.com Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com |
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