Florence Nightingale

— for Alex, a nurse I met who is also a poet, and all nurses

I heard that you are a poet
and a nurse. I imagine all the nurses who also
are something else—a chef, a Mom, a painter… a race car driver.
I want to image your life, this poet – and a nurse, in the middle of a pandemic.
I want to appreciate your life—and your stewardship of life and earth and what is in between.

I never knew nurses took an oath.
And I was a friend’s nurse graduation
at Royce Hall at UCLA, where we had both been to school, and when the
graduating class read the oath for nurses,
all throughout the auditorium nurses
stood up and said the oath with them. So, moving. So surprising.
I loved those nurses, nurses rising, and committing to their oath again.
And again, at every graduation they go to, they say the oath.
Bless those nurses, I thought. So grateful for your service. Continue reading “Poem: An Ode for Nurses during a Pandemic by Marie Cartier”