A Kind Of Healing, White Plains (NY)

Strange to think how this king
among the local doctors of the suburb
with his oh-so tailored suits
and suites of clean white rooms
and firm and silver haired receptionist
born and raised in the neighbourhood
in contrast to his strange, foreign name

should once have been

that nervy lanky mad school sophomore
flitting between cuckoo wards
in shoestring public hospitals
befriending patients his own age:
especially the most troubled
especially the girls.

He will not want to remember that now,
not now, in his antiseptic senior years,
All in practice,
his life sorted out with the anaesthetics:
wife, house, grown-up kids.
No need to go back
to tear at the scabs with anxious fingers,
no need now
for him to worry
or the long dead
or their next of kin.

Peter Keeble