THE DEATH OF RICKEY DAVID
He came with 21 donors from Illinois
to have us stitch his heart. And he will not
survive the afternoon. Two year old boy
last night looking quite healthy, and a brat.
We watch him sinking in his tented bed,
he whimpers, retches, struggles slightly, coughs,
the tracing slows and stops and he is dead.
Somebody flicks the cardiac monitor off.
The line upon the green screen disappears.
His eyes are sunken and his gray face wizened.
His mother cries Oh Rickey! when she hears:
this is the place where you learn a thing God isn’t.
-
Author:
Robert Southwick Richmond (
Offline) - Published: January 5th, 2021 12:20
- Comment from author about the poem: I wrote this poem when I was a medical student in 1961. Cardiac surgery required an extraordinary amount of transfused blood in those primitive days, and the blood donors came to the hospital in adjacent St. Louis.
- Category: Unclassified
- Views: 30
Offline)
Comments1
Well written Robert.
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