The physician as reader of poetry

Here’s another wonderful poem from a recent issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association. It’s also about an animal, but with a different mood and tone.

It’s called “Why My Wife Should Let Me Have a Dog” and the poet is Gary Stein. Only the first 150 words are available to non-subscribers, but one can appreciate the poem even in its truncated version.

Why My Wife Should Let Me Have a Dog

If I had a dog his soft fur would not foliate
the sofa or trigger asthma attacks
in my dear wife, ending with a hospital trip,
an adrenaline shot and those inhaler tubes
littering the house.

His rich brown eyes will convey profound
intelligence and sensitivity to the subtlest
shifts in my mood. Those eyes will never
get infected and fill with viscous yellow pus
we must wipe with Q-Tips and cure with
sticky ointment, awkward for us both.

My dog will lie by my feet while I read
the Sunday Times he fetched from the lawn
and delivered dry from his slobber-free
mouth, and he’ll wait for his walk
until I complete the crossword.

And when we walk he’ll heel until I hurl
a tennis ball. Watch him streak across
the grassy field, catch it on first bounce
and, with gleeful tail, surrender the prize to me
for another . . .

The rest of the poem continues to suggest the narrow line between comforting pleasures and the all-too-easily-imagined darker side of life. The last two stanzas begin “And when I have my heart attack …” and “While waiting for the ambulance ….” The poem concludes:

… this beast …
a gift as perfect as our children who,
when we play tennis, won’t serve as hard
as they can and will blow some shots
to let me think that by some necessary miracle
I’ve survived and will win in the end.

For the complete poem, consult the June 23/30 issue of JAMA, available in almost every public library.

Another poem by this poet, also published in JAMA, is available online in its entirety. It’s called “Why the Dying Need Wills.” An excerpt:

We want to give ourselves
away, piece by piece,
as if we owned everything
that matters.

I have no evidence that Gary Stein is a medical professional, but this most recent poem is one of a dozen by Stein that JAMA has published — evidence that he is read and appreciated by physicians. Among Stein’s other poems in JAMA: “Dysentery,” “What He Gave Up,” “One Night on the Porch at Meyer’s Creek,” “This Afterlife,” “Identifying the Body,” “The Three-Fingered Cashier,” “Washing the Car,” “The Rabbit’s Tumor,” “Cleaning Up the Women’s Health Center,” and “Halloween, 1995.”

Stein is a co-editor of Cabin Fever: Poets at Joaquin Miller’s Cabin, 1984-2001.

Update 7/30/10:
A new poem by Gary Stein in the July 14th issue of JAMA. The beginning is available online. The poem concludes:

…
Veins arrowed at my heart to make me move.

Once, age four, I fell from bed at night
and lay there wild enough to yell the darkness
white, but no one came to put me back.
I hugged the floor in vain for what was lost
and beat my knuckles raw until at last
in that harder place I came alone to sleep.

Resources:

Photo source: New Scientist

Gary Stein, “Why My Wife Should Let Me Have a Dog,” The Journal of the American Medical Association, June 23/30, 2010, Vol. 303 No. 24, p. 2448 (subscription required)