The doctor’s office grants no place
beyond the floor’s gray lines
to form and color. Here is space
clean scrubbed and blank, defined
by tile. Phone chorus, keyboard taps,
and beeping screens resound
in dis-ease: “Wait to be called back.”
I glance beyond the ground.
One tired, waiting, holds his wife’s
well-wrinkled hand. With moving lips,
eyes closed against fluorescent lights
these patients’ patience gives
rare things their form: see here,
the lobby’s poetry
lives, if intermittently.
