Career Day

There were children

who rode elevators to marbled foyers,

where secretaries with bouffant hair

put them in conference rooms

next to packets of Sweet and Low

and stale macaroons.

Others rode trucks while Japanese maples

wrapped in burlap

leaned against the cab in back,

or wrapped wieners on the waterfront

in mustard stained white aprons

sipping tart lemonade;

but my father was a cardiac surgeon

so I put on blue scrubs

and covered my hair and shoes

 with a cotton blue shower cap

and bubbled booties.

In a room white as snow drift,

he said: this is my scrub nurse.

She washes my hands with

a brush  and Phisohex,

 she peels the gloves

over my chapped skin.

Silver clamps holding ribs apart,

he said: this is a broken heart;

He pulled up a thread

taut as a wand

and the wound pursed its

scarlet lips.

Monday at school I gave my report;

it was a great success--

but I dreamed of that patient’s

silent face, curtained

from his yawning  wound.

He lay in spellbound trust,

as if a magician had only

pretended

to saw him in half.