Not Looking Away
The nurse in the hospital room answers
our family’s worried question,
her accent, light as raindrops from palm fronds,
a laugh as welcome as sun after storms.
Women like her are hunted now, open season
at bus stops, parking lots, maybe tonight on her way home.
I start to notice her sunken left eye, sightless,
flecked white, what must have been traumatic:
tumor, pencil, fall;
childhood shoves and taunts;
no prom corsage, the look-aways.
I stare and try not to, try
to find with both my blue eyes, her lively
doe-brown, the good one
that sees a way to help strangers.
Kathy Ray retired in 2024 from 30 years as a PA in the fields of dermatology, cardiology and internal medicine in the Albany, New York area. Patients’ stories often inspired poetry, but it was relegated to sticky notes. Now, words get their due.