A few days ago, I lost my wrist watch.
but now I'm reveling in the compensations.
Unburdened by artificial divisions,
time now has an entirely different quality.
It has unpredictable fluidity,
like the great ocean's shifting moods.
I get enmeshed in the essence of things,
live in the perpetual Now as the mystics say.
Driving to a medical session very early one morning,
there was a lovely deep mist by the Potomac river.
The atmosphere was completely altered.
Time slowed; the trees were transformed.
Skeletal ones who had already lost their plumage
had an ethereal quality in the mist.
Those with golden and crimson leaves were muted,
enhancing the leafless ones' particular beauty.
A man in a dark blue coat was walking his small dog in the mist.
The animal's auburn coat glowed like burnished gold.
As I left the river, the huge vermillion disk of the rising sun
arose like a gargantuan daemon passing before my eyes.
Then the hospital campus appeared and
I reluctantly left that unique world,
another planet, another plane of existence.
Thoughts of "Gorillas in the Mist" and
last night's brutal killing of a Patmas monkey in an Idaho zoo intruded.
He was a beautiful red hued creature weighing only thirty pounds,
with ancient wise eyes in a bearded humanoid face.
He was bludgeoned to death by a drunken young man,
leaving his small companion in confusion and grief.
These events from our so called real world passed through my mind and
penetrated my heart like dragon seeds.
At the path along the river, the leafless trees now looked artificial,
like so many huge sticks.
There was one thing I hadn't noticed in the morning mist,
an old white birch tree raised two of her large limbs, as if in prayer.
If you're traveling along a narrow road with an abundance of trees,
notice how they reach across, trying to touch one another.
As I moved on to the Highway, the trees had lost something.
I would describe it as a diminished vital force.
More and more wounds to the integrity of Mother Earth
manifest in the trees there,
reduced to insipid clones of their former selves.
My mind then drifted back to the murdered monkey and
I suddenly thought of a PETA demonstration in New York City years ago.
We were protesting against people who wore mink coats.
The idea was to inform them of the cruel way minks were slaughtered,
with recral electrical probes so as to leave no marks on their fur.
Colleagues were armed with Day-Glo spray paint cans
for those who refused to listen.
I was to wear the mink costume as it fitted me best.
Once inside this ensemble,
I immediately became claustrophobic and
joined the spray can brigade.
To this day, I am deeply ashamed that I saw the cops first and
beat a hasty retreat down a nearby subway.
In recent days, New York City was devoured by a horrific storm.
My old bailiwick, St. Vincent's Hospital, reduced to a clinic now,
is rooted at the edge of Greenwich Village.
Floods swallowed my old neighborhood and
the rest of lower Manhatten as well as swaths of other boroughs.
Our so called real world extends forth its' hovering dark wings
more and more frequently.
Increased water levels bode ill when
future storms strike New York and far beyond.
Cataclysmic storms, monetary crises, despicable politics,
a new Armageddon looms over the horizon.
Will the center hold this time?
From a landscape of well over three score years,
I think back on the 1930's with its' similar woes.
Most people respected and helped each other then.
They shared and hung on to a care worn hope for a better future.
Will the deep eddies of that afflicted time emerge now?
Note: The last stanza from the previous version has been replaced by two new ending stanzas. The title has also been modified.
