Nothing is merely black and white,
she thought, on finding her patient’s soul wounded—
suffering from absence, suffering from excess—
and in his need he agreed
to take in the space of Ansel Adams,
majestic peaks eclipsed by thunderheads
so grand they can bring rain to desert eyes.
In another room, there was an
air of loss and the pulse was shallow,
and she asked the patient
if he would like to
witness Georgia O’Keefe’s New Mexico,
hills and sky that catch the breath
and can move the heart again.
Then, bearing the weight of encumbered spirits—
a gravity not unlike what Van Gogh felt
when he sat to regard his cypress spires—
the attending carried herself
out of those heavy halls and beyond
to the mystery of her own starry night.
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