Infirmary by Kelley White

          --Canterbury Shaker Village, NH

Somewhere else I might have been
a physician. Here I learn what I learn:
herbs, suturing, a bit of dentistry.
Bandaging. Balms. And care. I might have been
a nurse. Not a midwife. Here. And we are fortunate.
Rarely a plague as we live without
the world. Oh, we grow old.



Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner-city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent collection is A Field Guide to Northern Tattoos (Main Street Rag Press.) She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant and is currently Poet in Residence at Drexel University College of Medicine.