A SMALL PROPOSAL

 

Not many of you could have possibly escaped the recent gyrations of our financial markets, or the responses of our government in dealing with the crises. Regardless of the pundit’s position in favoring or opposing government bailouts of private companies, there is one thing on which they all agree – we, the taxpayers, will be footing the bills which will continue to come in by the billions. Just today, one commentator, noting the rapid upswing of stock prices in the past two days, said, “This could not have happened merely by placing the reserves of the Treasury Department behind the failing companies. It required the bipartisan efforts of Congress, pledging the limitless (taxing) power over the production of the American people to stem the tide.”

 

Please don’t misunderstand. I’m as patriotic as the next person, but somehow I’m not completely cheered by the prospect of Congress using my earnings, alongside those of my co-workers (many of whom are working two jobs to support their families) to plug holes in a financial dam created by Wall Street and financial company executives grown immeasurably wealthy by building the house of cards we just seen tumble down. Call me a curmudgeon if you will, but I would be more cheered if I saw those same executives stripped of their bonuses and their ill-gotten gains. Sell their yachts and multi-million dollar second homes. Refund that money to the Treasury. Allow them to experience the same poverty and unemployment they have caused for their employees and investors.In addition, I think we should develop a new reality show for TV. Line up the small investors who have lost some or all of their life savings in these enterprises on both side of Wall Street. Equip them with small stones or perhaps allow the octogenarians to use their canes. Then have the most egregious offenders run the gauntlet of these injured investors. Better yet, make the event pay-per view, and donate the proceeds to those who had been harmed. Given our county’s lust for blood sport, this one should be a sell-out.

There is nothing that comes without a price. My Favorite Poet has found his Love, and their happiness is a wondrous thing to behold. His Muse, however, dwelt more in sorrow, and the presence of so much joy seems to have driven it away. For those of you who have asked about his work, here is a sample from earlier years. It seems appropriate for the coming of another seasonal cycle. Be well.

 

 it comes

 

when the air begins to crisp

with brittle chill and cracking wind

and the months roll into double digits,

when morning sun finds windows rimmed

 

with frost sketched out by icy pens,

(if, that is, there’s a morning sun to find)

and the trees weep their fiery leaves

to lay bare black branches, bone defined

 

against a low and dozing sky, often more soggy

than the ground that changes costume,

mud, now ice, now icy mud,

and emits a cloying rot perfume,

 

when the light surrenders early,

night sacks erstwhile afternoon,

when the mercury is fleeing

into its tiny glass balloon,

 

winter’s bounding towards us,

shaggy cold and steaming breath.

we humans shamble through the freeze;

more clever creatures play at death.

 

Medicine makes a lot of demands on those who chose to follow its calling. For most, the personal sacrifices are an unavoidable price that has to be paid. For others, the long hours provide an acceptable excuse for avoiding some of the messier details personal relationships require. This is true not only of medicine, but of any career where 60-80 hour workweeks are not the exceptions but the norm. Hope you all enjoy the weekend, and have a chance to take a break in order to recharge your batteries.

 

Taking charts home after work

 

The day work not done: into a big bag go charts

that are overstuffed with cholesterols and heart tracings

and spiking sugars from too much icing, and hearts

gone balloony. Charts snooze in the bag, kershuffle, and sing

of lives awry in diagnosis, askew in drug, kerplunk in grief.

I take the bag as homework, heavy in hand, and think

the more you love, the more you lose. And loss isn’t brief.

I write long notes as life’s abbreviations. Kerchink

goes the mechanism of my own care, too brief,

and I wonder what the chief lesson is, and who is chief,

what I can find that is not divine, if there is a link

between the satellite metastases and that reef

hung like noose over falling in love, and these charts

are testaments, manifestoes, omnibuses of broken hearts.

 

Shane Neilson