07.09.08

A day in the life of a poet nurse.

Posted in Thoughts and Reflections at 11:59 pm by admin

This morning I spent an hour on the Poets org Forum website, where I am a Moderator for the 101 Workshop Forum. I was reading new poetry while I performed a water change in the pond. The water change takes about two hours. I drain five hundred gallons from the pond over a fifteen minute period. Because I have a well that runs from an aquifer about one hundred feet below my home, I must refill the pond in two stages. I can run the garden hose for about thirty to thirty-five minutes continuously before the water pressure drops. After turning off the hose for thirty minutes or so to allow the well to refill, I finish topping off the pond in about fifteen more minutes. Unbelievably, the goldfish were spawning again this morning. Frisky little critters, aren’t they.

By the time the water change was finished, it was time to get ready for work, so I packed myself a sandwich, took a shower and headed in to the ER. It was a moderately busy day with the usual assortment of medical emergencies, but it was manageable.

On my way home from work, I had to take a detour due to road repaving and passed by the Farm Produce Stand owned and operated by O & F Farms from Worcester, PA. The stand is at 1040 Skippack Pike, Blue Bell, PA 19422, telephone (610) 272-9219 and lies between Union Meeting Road and Cathcart Road. The farm is located on Skippack Pike, Rt. 73 just below Rt. 363. I picked up five tomatoes at $1.49 a pound along with a large cucumber for 50 cents, a green bell pepper at 1.49 a pound and a huge head of romaine lettuce.

The moment I walked into my kitchen I started washing the produce and made a very large green salad with the lettuce and pepper along with cabbage, sweet onion, cucumber, a half a head of red leaf lettuce I still had in the refrigerator as well as a fresh tomato and mozzarella salad with thinly sliced fresh green bell pepper, basil, oregano, balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil. The smell of fresh tomatoes and peppers was too tempting to resist, and I ate an entire tomato and one quarter of the bell pepper right from the cutting board during the preparation. As anyone who loves tomatoes knows, there is nothing like the taste of a fresh garden tomato. Yum!

Dinner consisted of a half of a chicken breast shredded into a bowl of Barilla tubini with pasta sauce made from half and half tomato sauce and salsa and fresh grated parmesan cheese, a green salad and three cups of the tomato salad, and a large tumbler wine spritzer made of Yellow Tail Shiraz and homemade seltzer. Now I know some of you may shreak at the thought of ruining a good Shiraz with seltzer, but hey it’s my palate and I love it. I was stuffed and quite happily uncomfortable.

After dinner I sat on my front porch in the rocker with a glass of Tawny Port while I performed another water change on the pond, then fed the fish from the cement bench next to the waters edge. By the time the pond had refilled, it was dark outside so I retired to the living room to spend an evening with poetry from the Poets org forum and my copy of “3XCARLIN AN ORGY of GEORGE” and another new poetry book written by a member at Poets org by the name of Steve Meador “Throwing Percy from the Cherry Tree”. I’m on my second read of Steve’s book. George helped me to laugh, Steve helped me to laugh, think, and reflect. Here’s my Amazon review for “Percy”:

“Steve Meador’s book “Throwing Percy from the Cherry Tree” rings true on many levels. His poetry reflects the innocence of a boy growing up in the 1960’s and 70’s, a time I can easily relate to. I know him only marginally from the Academy of American Poets, Poetry Forum, as our paths rarely crossed. Until this book, I had never read any of his work. I wrote the following to Steve on June 30, 2008 in private correspondence:

‘I believe we walked similar paths in our youth. So many of your “stories”, and yes they are stories written as poetry, transported me back to those years. A few of the poems leave me questioning, because I believe there are messages within the words that I have yet to realize.

I can’t help but wonder though if you have yet to realize your potential and true calling. With all humility, you are a novelist, down to your core. I would urge you to explore this and ask yourself whether you have a story to write. I believe you do, strongly.’ ”

It wasn’t a bad way to end a day, not a bad way at all. I used to dread turning fifty. Turns out, Fifty ain’t so bad!

O.P.W.

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