The Dance of Power and Vulnerability: Holding Together and Falling Apart

Poems about medicine and motherhood

Welcome back! I’ve spent the New Year in a new and unexpected type of watershed discipleship. I am one of 13 artists who created a piece of art inspired by creatures who live in the Brown’s Creek Watershed. My work focused on caddisflies, who are awe-inspiring little creatures. Caddisflies are environmental engineers in their creeks and streams. They build nets that prevent erosion and slow water flow. The slower water flow allows more creatures to live in the stream. They also keep streams clean, but they can only thrive in clean waters, so they are important water quality indicators too. If you are local to the Twin Cities area, come check out The Water Where We Live exhibit in Stillwater, MN. It runs from January 24-April 18, with a reception on March 6.

As I finished up this project, the Substack and writing juices have been flowing. I’ve been doing some writing, research, and exploring about rewilding healthcare. I’ve been taking a class about the story of Briar Rose, which has turned the meaning of the story on its head for me. The story has inspired me to create a plant profile on Rose, which will be forthcoming next week. The following week, I’ll feature an interview with

Justin McAffee

about collapse in the healthcare sector. After that, I plan to return to my slower winter publishing schedule until inspiration strikes again.

While researching roses, I was digging through old journals looking for notes from plant spirit journeys with rose. I didn’t find that, but did find some old poems that felt worth sharing. Two are about working as a doctor.

Thoedore Lowry of Story Paths

interviewed me recently for his podcast (stay tuned), and one point he made that stuck with me was that the wellbeing of healers is a measure of the wellbeing of our culture. In a way, those of us working in healthcare are the caddisflies of our ecosystem. The last poem is a bit of a palate cleanser about motherhood. I hope they offer something to where you find yourself today.

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How I Was Taught

You are not good enough
You are not smart enough
You will never be enough
If you never do anything bad
Nothing bad will happen
Mistakes=death

There is no room for creativity
For trial and error
For forgiveness
Because forgiving mistakes
Means tolerating them happening again
Means accepting that you are human

So we will make you not human
Unmoved by human suffering
Unforgiving of the flaws of others
More unforgiving of the flaws of yourself

Unable to see the body as more than a machine
A person as more than a machine
Unable to feel the spirits coursing all around you
Births and deaths
Wounds and healing
Feeding each other

But imperceptible because you are no longer
Of that realm
No longer susceptible 
To hunger

Never show uncertainty
Never be deceived
Never hug
Never cry

Move the meat
On to the next one…

The Spell

There aren’t many people in the world
Who hold death in their hands on a regular basis
Fewer and fewer all the time

As death becomes 
Something specialized
Something outsourced

Even most doctors 
Find themselves unsure what to do
When they stumble upon someone
Who is dying
Right. 
Now.

If you are dying 
Right.
Now. 
I know what to do
The person you want in that moment
Must be many different people

A person who knows everything
A person who can keep their heart open
Read the room
Support you, your family, and dozens of helpers in the room
A person who never doubts herself
A person who can ignore that every eye is upon her
A person who is humble
Rowing on the River Styx
She knows there are only so many ways 
You can fight the current

When you are dying
Right. 
Now.
There comes a time
When the potions have been pulled
The electricity unleashed
The breath of life blown
The fabric of flesh torn
Everyone who has been here before 
Knows how the story unfolds from here

But those other eyes don’t know
Those eyes follow you
Watching the tension in your shoulders
The cadence of your breath
The curl of your lip
To hear the spell you will cast
The spell that unfolds 
Hope or despair
Life or death
And, eventually, always, irrevocably,
Both

The Clock

The first time
In my life
That there was a way
Of telling time
That wasn’t a clock

The last few weeks 
Of pregnancy
With my eldest daughter

When will she arrive?

When the time is right
When the child is ripe
When your body answers the call
Of a deep inner knowing

Is she pulled by a phase of the moon?
The setting of the sun?
A certain temperature?
The barometric pressure?

You will never know more
Because you never need to know more
Your body
Made of earth
Attuned to rhythms
Of the earth
That your mind can’t hear

Having left the clock behind
It is not 4:49 pm
It is twilight the week before the winter solstice

It is not May 3
But the weekend the lilacs and crabapples bloom
The best smelling weekend of the year
The perfect time to harvest ramps

And the doe will birth her fawn
Three and a half weeks later
Under the light of the next full moon

As my children grow
And wander farther and farther from me
I can’t feel the earth clock 
As intensely as I once did
But still she calls her creation
To bleed with the moon
To rest when it is dark
To know with all certainty when it is time to bloom