Dermatologist’s office. Tuesday morning. 11:30 a.m.
Soft classical music. Chopin, I think. Hard wood chairs.
Every seat is filled but one. I take my place, dreading the wait.
The other patients are elderly, their feathery white caps
a contrast to my bark brown hair now copper-streaked
with henna to hide the first gray strands. 
A late October light shines through their skin giving
it the appearance of golden Depression era glass.
The frailest woman wears large gauze bandages
on her face and arms. When she catches me observing 
she flashes the most loving of smiles. My tense face
relaxes and I return the kindness, eyes shining
warmth for a fragile stranger. 
Why am I smiling,
I think a moment later, here to investigate
a minute freckle, a recently arrived gray dot
that henna will not help. 
 
The young doctor enters the waiting room, calls a name.
No one moves. She calls again and we patients set to looking
at each other, wondering whose turn it is, and why they don’t go.
I sense it is this sparrow of a woman the doctor wants; I turn toward her,
repeat the name. Yes, her tiny head bobs. Slowly, she rises
and wobbles her way into the inner office.
I don’t see her again. When my turn comes, I disappear too.
“It may be benign, possibly not,” the doctor says. “The only way
to be sure is to remove it. There will be a scar.”

I decide to watch and wait, the other option she offers,
“not without some risk” as if to emphasize her disapproval of my choice.
When I leave, I am amazed to feel relief though nothing’s been settled.
I feel light, almost translucent, like the skin of the old ones, happy 
with my new willingness to wait. Stepping into the unknown,
life seems so suddenly full
of possibilities.

and then the day moves along
like an unfinished song you
compose in your mind, one
moment at a time, chord by
chord. The melody of now keeps
us on track, not looking forward or
back, its elegant strains of serenity
your dance partner, until night 
falls and then 
again, dawn…
                        

We shuffle back and forth
from the real to the unreal
every day, somehow not
understanding what we do,
laboring on hour 
by hour, reacting as if
jerked, marionette-like
through life

Reading a poem that takes
us to another realm, one
of radiance and depth and joy
while the tug of bank
accounts and bills wills
to tow us further into
the responsible normal

Stopping to breathe, air
rushes like electric relief 
into lungs, charges
our brains with numinous
vibrations, guiding thoughts
to heights where light
loosens the chains of earth

only to hear the boisterous 
roar of a plane, a voice trespassing
through an open window,  
the stroke of an hour
chimed by the mantel clock as
time, most unreal, peals
its thunderous demands,
strident reminder that stillness 
is a gift we must choose
to bestow upon ourselves