BY LAWRENCE HALL

A Connoisseur of Clinic Waiting Rooms

I could regale you with tales of puppy dogs

Painted with matching little argyll vests

And Kodachrome sunsets snapped long ago

Darkness and dust settling on a fading lake

I could detail for you leatherette chairs

In rows beneath the television on the wall

Facing old women shrieking in HD

And years-old magazines that no one reads

A door opens to a whiff of germicide

My name is called—and there’s no place to hide!

A Dead Bug in the Hospital

Recumbent on a gurney, little to do

Except to wait and think and hope and pray

Not sure where I was in the surgical queue

Above me the fluorescents, where a dead bug lay

We were both quiet, he especially so

I would have asked him how he came to rest

On a panel of plastic; I wanted to know—

He had been blinded by the light, I guessed

I thought of this as I lay in my too-short bed

“You’re in recovery now,” a kind voice said

Appropriating Babushkas from the Orthodox

(on the first Sunday home from the hospital)

A babushka badly in need of a hearing aid 

Asked me if I would sub for the missing lector

I apologetically said I really didn’t feel up to it 

And would she please ask somebody else.

I tracked her progress back to the narthex by sound:

“HE SAYS HE DON’T WANNA HE’S SICK!”  “HE SAYS HE DON’T WANNA HE’S SICK!” “HE SAYS HE DON’T WANNA HE’S SICK!” “HE SAYS HE DON’T WANNA HE’S SICK!” “HE SAYS HE DON’T WANNA HE’S SICK!”  “HE SAYS HE DON’T WANNA HE’S SICK!” “HE SAYS HE DON’T WANNA HE’S SICK!” “HE SAYS HE DON’T WANNA HE’S SICK!”

But it’s all good; God gives us babushkas

To show us that the Faith, like the babushkas

Will never go away.