Gulfs by Woods Nash
Afternoon, ethics class, where students gab
about a fictional doctor: a man who can’t feel
a pelvic exam, who barely notes the wrenching agony
of the half-dressed woman on the table. One
student stays strikingly silent, won’t lift her gaze
from a scarf she’s making. Her twin needles fury
the crimson yarn. Her t-shirt invites us all
to F Off. It’s my lecture, I picked the story,
and I’ve donned my finest suit. Now I, too, long
for solitude. If this room had a window with a view
of the bayou, I could dream of a voyage
in a slender canoe. Escape to the gulf,
to the erasing sea. But my job is to stay
in this ruptured place, where easy talk
continues: a simple critique of the doctor’s detachment,
his rough technique. I thought we could read
our way to compassion, but maybe I was wrong.
We still don’t have a clue what to ask the patient
or how to ease her pain. I watch the knitting student,
the dip and stab of her wooden needles, dip
and stab. I wait for her to speak. Has she seen the gap
between touch and understanding? Her dark
red scarf is nearly finished—almost ready,
perhaps, to be worn. I walk to the corner, out of the way,
and keep waiting. My plan is to stand here
a long time. I reach up, uncinch my top button,
and begin to unknot my tie.
Woods Nash is an Assistant Professor of Bioethics and Medical Humanities at the University of Houston Fertitta Family College of Medicine. My poems are in JAMA, Bellevue Literary Review, Annals of Internal Medicine, and Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine.
I love this poem so much!! Here we have a bioethics professor who humbly acknowledges the challenging landscape of the subject matter he must introduce to his class. In fact, the poem paints a picture of a man who feels an inner conflict at having to profess expertise about such a sensitive scenario — one in which a patient’s internal experience is ultimately unknowable. He admits that he wants to escape from this weighty responsibility.… Read more »