April 2: William Carlos Williams

The Good Doctor

for William Carlos Williams

“You now officially have more information about me

than any other person on the planet,” I said,

handing over five small-print pages

where I checked family history

boxes beside disorders and cancers,

X-ing them hard,

layering death-black ink like superstitions

while tallying loves and losses,

counting on confessions to keep me safe.

In the waiting room, my mind wanders

as I wonder whether a sinning priest

can confess to himself.

Here, I think of you, William Carlos Williams,

the good doctor,

a wound in one hand,

a salve in the other,

never waiting in this room

to hear the sound of your own name.

You, the diagnostician,

must have known always what you had,

but in this waiting room

a woman who cannot heal herself

cries.

I finger-trace cures into idle hands,

stand by for white-coat wonders.

I want to write her well like you,

to save all the plums for her,

push her in red wheelbarrows home

where she can dance naked in front of a mirror,

afraid only of waking the baby,

her sweet Kathleen.

I am no cure.

I can only put her in a poem.