Hobbies & Interests

I have frequently been asked if I did anything other than work. The answer is yes. I like the Arts. My favorite art forms are the visual arts and poetry. I have enclosed two for your viewing pleasure (or displeasure). And no, I will not quit my day job!!! For our Annual Halloween/Flu clinic I write poems denoting the main theme for that year.

SMALL TOWN DOCTOR

Written for all the patients I was privileged to have cared for and still do, and my wonderful staff who have helped me in this task.

Ladies, I'm late, is the schedule real tight

I was called for a code, which kept me working all night.

 The office time passes with fun and with gloom.

You know not what awaits in each patient room.

Hello again folks, Hey Dad, why the frown?

The divorce thinned him out now that Mom's not around.

Antibiotics for now will not do the trick,

as the agent is viral and she won't remain sick.

I remember the day you were two inches tall,

no joke, little girl you were really that small.

The meds were prescribed for a very clear need

and the research you brought I will readily read.

To grow taller than doc, is a most serious crime

and for that big, tough guy, you'll get shots all the time.

 The baby's vaccines may concern you a lot.

I assure you they're safe, and poison they're not.

If he's really that bad he'll need care just the same.

You must bring him now not after the game.

I'm not sure of the cause so labs we must get.

It's much too early, for a referral... just yet.

The mom from the code now wants DNR,

but that child can now live quite a few years more.

 The pharmacist called and is waiting on you,

as he can't read your scripts and doesn't know what to do

"I have my new grades," he said with a smirk.

Good job little man keep up the good work.

For kids to lose weight a family diet would do.

No, mom you’re not fat not implying that too.

Ladies, please call the child from the first.

No recheck was made and I fear for the worst.

Forms, and more forms, med school wasn't for this,

but fighting disease surely headed the list.

Good night good ladies, I'll be alright.

Baby boy's doing well, think I'll circ him tonight.

My wife is happy. My boy's job is a dream,

my college girl's home, my teen made the team.

Ah, what nice music for a day filled with strife;

just another crazed day, in my most wonderful life.

The Handoffs

Written for all the heart aches that transform couples into parents

. … and a little less than saints.

The first handoff was to a teacher with rambunctious children.

It was to begin a spark for learning

but we pained about the upcoming vulnerability, a first-time burden of loneliness,

and the time lost from the vigilance of the slightest new development.

We were comforted only by the rushed and earnest hugs, 

and enthusiastic earfuls of class events

from our highly motivated little traveler.

The second handoff was to a cold and distant place of higher learning.

It was to secure a paper which would secure a dream.

However, it seemed a premature abandonment, the first real letting go,

to a make-believe world of intellectual stress

and a very real world of post adolescent hijinks.

It would be a forced separation of the evolving yet familiar trio of us.

The calls, the texts, and the skyping helped fill the absent sounds and space,

but we could never return to what was as subsequent visits revealed a subtle distancing.

We were all growing up and growing older.

The third handoff was to another.....

wide eyed, eager hopeful professing eternal love and sincerity.

It seemed the first real step at replacing us.

We had to believe that this was inevitable......how it should be.....and for the better....

We were rewarded by an increase in the fold with the arrival of innocence again,

reviving our parental reflexes again and just feeling needed again.

Now, with grown men and women the fourth handoff will be the hardest

as we will hand them over for the last time, to each other

and to God's good grace.

And they to us.....will do the same.

Raising children is a series of painful handoffs.

Where is the fun or glory in that, as we slowly and consistently

give them away?

Yet, if we failed to do this at any point

something would seem horribly wrong,

so, we would not have it any other way.

But the succession of handoffs mutually benefits

while they bloom and slip from us,

we are also refined while peeling away from them.

For it is not only what we do for them, but what they do for us.

By caring and releasing we are broken but remade.....stronger

with the experience and enduring mortar of uncommon love

we are bestowed the unshakable bricks of wisdom.

Moreover, they were never really ours to keep

but to safeguard, rear, guide, and treasure

only to be gradually discharged into the world when their time came.

And we would do this in the best way we could,

as our greatest work, our most zealous hope,

and our grandest gift.

POENARI ESCAPE

Meet Vlad Dracula’s real castle and how he escapes!

From Basarab’s will, it has been told

came a fortress of bricks, where events would unfold.

That all saw quite well, from the village below

a place of retreat, or a watchful shadow.

A formidable structure atop a tall mountain

with trees and a river and rain powered fountains.

Fourteen-eighty steps would sap the full strength

of approaching invaders of all sizes and length.

But the fathers of old would abandon this site

and leave to the wind it’s centuries plight.

Then Vlad the Impaler would later come here,

and see the potential that most would revere

The renovation of courts and roads staunchly paved

from the precise calculations of forced boyar slaves.

Castles Arges and Poenari with their stones of great fame

came a stout citadel transformed and renamed.

This tranquil of places was for shunning disorder

and ravaging towns just beyond the close border.

His queen too found peace behind its thick towers.

With a view of the river which bedazzled for hours.

Such blissful escape was like soft music dancing

until the war came with the Turks now advancing.

Thousands were killed still more would proceed

charging like vermin never pausing to heed.

A retreat to the fortress was their only recourse

for escaping the fervor of this menacing force.

“My love we can leave through the tunnels I made

and fight from afar this winnable raid.”

“Go get your things we must quit here with haste

They’ve rushed our defenses there’s no time to waste.

But what of the others? What will be their fate?

They are not my concern and their numbers too great!”

“My word is my honor which i cannot betray

They’re my comfort and strength when you are away.

You can depart and I’ll meet you there later

the villagers know just how they will cater.”

And so, he set out, but she never did follow

what escape routes would block the river would swallow.

For as he rode off on a horse with tricked shoes,

his route was revealed and was no longer used.

When she learned of the breech she knew of her end.

She would join with the river, her sweet gentle friend.

With the fighting now closer, to the few she could trust,

“Be brave my dear people, and do what you must.”

“I have to go” and with sorrow and gloom

she ascended the stairs to her dark tower room.

A last look around at the place she knew well

with red tearful eyes, from the window she fell.

As she sadly descended her thoughts were sublime

my love we’ve escaped for the very last time.

The news of her passing he could not believe

as her watery grave was never retrieved.

He searches yet still for the hand of his queen

and just may succeed as it’s……Halloween!!!