Poetry Corner: Seeds of a Dream

From the February 24, 2023 issue of the Transformational Times

Seeds of a Dream

Michael Kofi Esson

  

I know a tree: 

Discarded on the lonely mountains of despair, it was only but a seed, 

Battered and bruised by the heat of injustice, its roots rooted in pain, 

With a promise of hope, it sprouted for everyone to see, 

Covered by the showers of love, it rose from the fertile grounds of its mother’s womb with barks as strong as an ebony tree, 

It grew tall like Kilimanjaro, looking eye to eye with the heavens- its branches from sea to sea, 

Under the warm kisses of sunshine, its flowers blossomed and bloomed for many moons. 

 

I know a tree, 

In the shades of its canopy, I am forever free. 

 

 

Michael Kofi Esson is a medical student in the MCW-Milwaukee Class of 2025 with a passion for contributing to refugee communities locally and abroad. He believes in the healing and transforming powers of stories shared through poems. His hope is to continue to write poems and, in the process, grow and heal anew. He is chair of MCW’s Refugee Mentorship and treasurer of MCW’s White Coat for Black Lives. 

 

 

Temperature

From the January 6, 2023 issue of the Transformational Times

Temperature

By David Nelson, PhD, MS

Temperature
36 degrees Fahrenheit.
AM? PM?
Breathe that stands out.
Feet to stand on – cold.
Concrete to stand on – cold.
It rains, and the feet on the concrete – are cold.
Head, shoulders, arms, waist, legs, wet and cold.
You are out and in need of everything.
Gratitude for those that come along to support.
Holding a sign with shaking hands from the cold.
Breathe or fog – we do not know.
AM? PM?
36 degrees Fahrenheit.







Author’s Notes

This day was memorable for all the wrong reasons. There are days in the city that are just glorious. Bluebird days with blue skies and moderate temperatures and a shining sun. Then, there are days like this one. Gray clouds, frosty-just-short-of-freezing air and rain. I do not remember exactly if the forecast predicted a day of the weather, but having been out on the streets doing outreach for many years, I thought it could be just like this all day long. I snapped a picture with my phone of the digital thermometer in the truck while stopping for a coffee up a coffee and it stood out. Only the temperature showed on the digital thermometer. For some reason I thought it might be the same temperature all day long and it turned out to be so. It was going to be a crap weather day.

A recurrent theme of the streets are shoes. Community members walk a lot. It is not unusual to for someone to walk five or six miles on a given day. On outreach, I look at a person’s feet first. The shoes tell me a lot about the person. I can also know their size and if they have feet issues by seeing how they wear their shoes out. Worn heels signify one issue, toe sticking straight up or to the side another issue and so on. The size comes from changing a lot of shoes over the years – the benefit of working in a shoe store for a season.

David Nelson, PhD MS is an Associate Professor of Family and Community Medicine at MCW. He leads many of MCW’s community engagement efforts, partnering with public and private organizations to enhance learning, research, patient care and the health of the community. Much of this work involves leaving campus and going to the places where the people he wants to help live, work and play. He serves on the board of Friedens Community Ministries, a local network of food pantries working to end hunger in the community.

To Kill A Year - Poetry by Olivia Davies

 From the 5/6/2021 newsletter

Poetry by Olivia Davies

To Kill A Year

I wish I could show you in news clips

The loud clang of the beginning,

The silent empty of the middle,

The painful drone of the end

I wish I could show you in pictures the loss, 

But it was hidden behind, between, below

masks

the most deafening silence

the most provocative noise

I wish I’d never have to show you at all.

Olivia Davies is a graduating 4th year medical student who will be starting her residency training at Massachusetts General Hospital this summer. Her poem, To Kill A Year, will be featured in the upcoming edition of MCW’s Auscult: A Literary and Arts Journal.

Ms. Davies is an Associate Editor of The Transformational Times. 

Poetry by Rhea Martin - Dear America

From the 4/16/2021 newsletter

Poetry

Rhea Martin

Dear America

I wish I felt loved by you.
I wish I felt safe being with you.
I wish I could trust the promises of hope and progress you keep saying will come.

Like any love
It is not perfect 
There is beauty as well as sorrow 
To give unconditional love means to have trust
I wish I could trust you America
But I can’t 

and what’s worse 
Is that it breaks my heart to see that people are trying
beautiful, strong, devoted people fight for you
And maybe I’m not strong enough to give 
That trust

That doesn’t mean you are hopeless
Or less beautiful and vibrant and passionate 
Nor is anywhere else going to be perfect
I’m not naive to expect more than what can be given within the current climate 
But maybe we just don’t fit 
and that’s ok
I wish nothing but the best for you

To the man who almost ran me over today
Who didn’t stop
Who didn’t look back 
To the witnesses who walked away 
To the police that drove around my neighborhood pretending to look out for the community

How dare you have the audacity to put the words “Black Lives Matter” in your yards
and in your windows 
and bumper stickers on your cars

To the one POC who witnessed what happened and gave me a ride home and said
Thank you for doing the decent, human thing

“Thank god you had good reflexes”

I know it is not a crime to be 
A women
Queer
Or Black

But America

Stop gaslighting me 

America

Being with you it’s like being with an alcoholic
I don’t know whether to be pessimistic or optimistic that recovery is in your future
There are so many programs and so many resources
Your casual slurs and liveliness at parties used to be fun
And I know I can be easily accused of not being virtuous enough to see you through and see you get better
I feel like it is on my back to make it my responsibility for you to get better

You have made it so many people's responsibility to call you out on your history and your lack of transparency of your habits habits you keep and how you destroy communities
But you are like my family
I would not be who I am without you
To have criticism does not mean I don’t see you for who you are
More
So much more than a simple word 
A moment 
A feeling 
I get so mad when others treat me better
Because I want to feel that love and acceptance 
from you

Show me I can believe in you
I want to trust you 

I want to walk down the street and feel safe
As a queer
Black 
Women
I google, safest places to live In America
Then I remember 
Back space 
Safest places for black queer women to live in America
Because there is a difference

Am I the problem
And I the problem in this relationship?
You shrug your shoulders
And I guess it depends

What am I wearing 
Where are you from
Did I say what I said the right way
Do I care too much?
Are you on your period?
Are my standards a little bit too high

I don’t know
But I’ll keeping working on things that are in my control
I am still standing today
I know about us right now, let’s take a break

Rhea Martin is a Public Ally with Public Allies MKE and an Intern with the MCW Office of Diversity and Inclusion. Rhea reflects on their relationship with America as a queer person of color. This work was shared during the Spring 2021 MedMoth event at MCW. 

Winter Equinox - Poem

From the 12/18/2020 newsletter


Winter Equinox

Tamera Amadei-Bourne 

The darkest day of the year
announces itself in a fortnight
heralding for us to 
pause – 
reflect – 
heal.

Winter slowly knocks
on the door,
grasping its icy, bone fingers
to the frame,

inching it open,
expanding the dark, crisp night.
failing to eliminate the pin prick of 
light.

Tress adorn with candles,
illuminating the familiar faces – 
Parents, child, spouse
as gifts are passed around.
Laughter defrosts the chill
enveloping us into an embrace,
eroding the darkness into a fine dust – 
freeing the light.

 This week’s poem is by Tamera Amadei-Bourne, a Research Program Assistant, whose passion is writing. She began writing when she was seven, and that love led to a degree in Mass Communications/English with an emphasis in Public Relations and Creative Writing. Poetry helped her heal through a personal tragedy, and she had the pleasure of seeing three of her poems published. This poem is inspired by the approaching Equinox and the turbulent times we are currently experiencing.

Words for these times, a pandemic

From the 12/4/2020 issue


Poetry

Words for these times, a pandemic 

Julie Arthur



Could I write words for these times?
Arrange letters in some fashion
To make the distance bridged.
Writing is a powerful weapon, I am humanity’s soldier,
Words are an offering, a salve.


But nothing I write can unbreak my son’s literal broken heart.
Nothing I can write can sooth the figuratively shattered hearts I see on the floor all around me.


We are masked these days whether
we wear them or not,
and those masks hide the smiles
as well as the frowns, the fear
-that doesn’t just emote from the eyes you know-
and the recognition that these days, which are not for always, are at least for now.


I am not young nor old
And feel I should have wisdom to not feel so breathlessly scared every moment.
Steadfastness escapes me at every turn, I’m left chasing it, just as all are chasing answers
As to how things will end, how we’ll all get out
Of this ok.


These times are not for always.


Something I repeat as a hymn or a hum underneath the terror of the currents of my day.
An oar on this lonely lifeboat to white knuckle
And never let go of.
I wish I could give so many things to others,
Hope, or inspiration, or kindnesses,
Things to pack for the singular journeys we seem to all be on together.


Perhaps these words, these letters, can be
The salve then, used when the wounds are fresh,
When it’s night and things overwhelm,
To read and reread and in the silence to know:
I am there with you too.




Julie Arthur is an Education Program Coordinator II at MCW. “I have worked for MCW for almost 12 years, and have been writing poetry and fiction since first grade! I believe as much as medicine heals, words do too.”

Fact: Malaria in pregnancy causes 200,000 stillbirths per year in Africa

A poem for Global Health Week

Fact:
Malaria in pregnancy causes 200,000 stillbirths per year in Africa 
 

 
As the shadow attaches to her toes
so the mother slings the still
born over her shoulder until night
when her birthed treasure is buried
with the others under the blankets.
At cock’s crow she presses the pink
of his unformed lips to her breast.
Soon the dead will have another
Birthday, and she will tell him stories.
 
 

Cameron Conaway
From “Malaria Poems” (Michigan State University Press, 2014)
 
 

Cameron Conaway is an adjunct professor in the Professional Communication Program at the University of California-San Francisco. He was the first poet-in-residence at Bangkok’s Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU).
 
 

Her Hospital is Now my School - A poem

From the 11/13/2020 newsletter

Her Hospital is Now my School

Sarah Steffen

September comes to a close, and October creeps in.

My body feels it before I even realize it.

Exhaustion.

Grief rising to the surface.

I drive to school in the same direction.

In the same dark dreariness.

Rainy and cold. Bone-chilling.

Just as it was when we bundled up in her room watching the rain come down.

Sitting vigil. Keeping watch throughout the night.

Waiting.

Waiting for an end that was coming.

Now on breaks we stroll through the hospital.

So casually.

So loudly.

Almost too joyfully.

As if it’s forgotten that this is still a hospital and not just our school.

Past the surgical waiting room, where families hold their breath.

Past the cafeteria where my family spent so much time.

Waiting. Resting. Breathing.

I see her room from here and am transported back in time.

I can’t be here. Not this week. Not this time of year.

It’s too tangible.

Too real.

Every day I walk into school,

into the same building.

The same building where my grandmother worked for so many years

to take care of and welcome new, little babies into the world.

And it was here.

Here in the place where she loved to work so much

that she took her last breath.

I am distinctly aware of this.

Every day.

But especially this day.

Her hospital is now my school.

My home too.

And in my heart, I know

this is just how she would want it to be.

Sarah Steffen is a medical student in the MCW-Central Wisconsin Class of 2022.