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MERI Center Blog

September 30, 2020
SMS Meeting Poems
Compassion

 

This week's Symptom Management Service poem was "If You Knew" by Ellen Bass.  It was the perfect choice for my mood the past few days as I was writing our monthly newsletter, which focuses on connection.  In this time of social (physical) distancing, it feels like we are so far apart from each other at times and yet, we can find ways to make even small, seemingly ephemeral connections that have meaning.  I get to sit in two poetry workshop each week, "lurking" in the background, listening to poems created in under 5 minutes, soaking in the imagery and emotion they evoke, thinking about how those words resonate in me. I have not met most of them in person and yet, I feel connected to each of them.  I feel blessed by each of them through their words. 

Listening today to "If You Knew" by Ellen Bass just highlighted that even the briefest interactions can have a huge impact and we should strive to remember that the smallest ounce of compassion can make a difference. 

If You Knew

by Ellen Bass

What if you knew you’d be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line’s crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn’t signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won’t say Thank you, I don’t remember
they’re going to die....

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September 23, 2020
SMS Meeting Poems
Grief/Loss

Today, Mike Rabow read, "When Great Trees Fall" by Maya Angelou, in honor of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's passing.  Since Friday, I've cycled between shock, grief, anxiety, and gratitude.  Losing Notorious RBG was devastating not only on a personal, human level, but also on a societal and political level.  We owe her a debt of gratitude for all her work on equality and road she has paved for us. We owe it to her and many others, including Maya Angelou, to continue the struggle for equality, against social injustice of any sort.  We can be. Be and be better. For they have existed. And today, it feels like we must be and better for so much is at stake. 

Thank you, RBG, for blazing the trail as long as you could and for being an outstanding role model.  May we pick up the torch you have passed us and hold it high.

When Great Trees Fall

Maya Angelou

When great trees fall,

rocks on distant hills shudder,

lions hunker down

in tall grasses,

and even elephants

lumber after safety.



When great trees fall

in forests,

small things recoil into silence,

their senses

eroded beyond fear.



When great souls die,

the air around us becomes

light, rare, sterile.

We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,

see with

a hurtful clarity.

Our memory, suddenly sharpened,

examines,

gnaws on kind words

unsaid,

promised walks

never taken.


Great souls die and

our reality, bound to

them, takes leave of us.

Our souls,

dependent upon their

nurture,

now shrink, wizened.

Our minds, formed...

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September 10, 2020
SMS Meeting Poems

Yesterday's Symptom Management Service meeting poem, read by Dr. Mike Rabow, was "I Am Not I" by Juan Ramon Jiminez.

“I Am Not I”

BY JUAN RAMÓN JIMÉNEZ

TRANSLATED BY ROBERT BLY

I am not I.

                   I am this one

walking beside me whom I do not see,

whom at times I manage to visit,

and whom at other times I forget;

who remains calm and silent while I talk,

and forgives, gently, when I hate,

who walks where I am not,

who will remain standing when I die.

 

The title in and of itself seemed appropriate for yesterday, which to me seemed like a day that was not a day. The orange-hued fire haze eclipsing the sun and turning the day into an endless night.  My social media was flooded with pictures of the tinted air that blanketed the Bay Area and beyond. Eerie, brownish-orange apocalyptic air mixed with a heavy layer of fog in my neighborhood.  By 2:30 pm, it felt like 7:30 pm and I was ready to stop working and go to bed.  What more will 2020 bring us?  

 

August 27, 2020
SMS Meeting Poems
Resilience/Wellbeing

It’s been too long since we have last posted to this blog.  The summer, even during the pandemic, diverted our attention. New workshops, writing a paper, focusing on the future and how we will mold it to our vision.  And a fear that I personally was using it as a platform for my agenda, my beliefs, my pain.  It can be a fine line of representing an organization and misrepresenting your own beliefs as the organization’s.   But I realize that not focusing on the blog was a mistake.   So I, we, will make an effort to post regularly. 

To start our renewed efforts, I end with a poem that Dr. Rabow read at yesterday's Symptom Management Service meeting, one that is particularly powerful as we contineu to fight against racial injustice.

 

Absolute
by Jacqueline Woodson

The summer I was ten a teenager named Kim butterflied my hair. Cornrows curling into braids behind each ear.

Everybody’s wearing this style now, Kim said.

Who could try to tell me I wasn’t beautiful. The magic in something as once ordinary as hair that for too long had not been good enough now winged and amazing now connected

to a long line of crowns.

Now connected to a long line of girls moving through Brooklyn with our heads

held so high, our necks ached. You must know this too – that feeling

of being so much more than you once believed yourself to be

so much more than your too-skinny arms and too-big feet and too-long fingers and too-thick and stubborn hair

All of us now suddenly seen the trick mirror that had us believe we weren’t truly beautiful suddenly shifts

and there we are

and there we are

and...

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May 20, 2020
SMS Meeting Poems
Resilience/Wellbeing

Today's poem was written & read by Dr. Tom McNalley and was one of the award winning poems from the UCSF Department of Medicine Shelter-in-Poetry contest.

The Things We Bear Alone

Some things were not made to be borne alone:
the impossible dance of Anna’s hummingbird
returned to the nectar of the crimson snapdragon,
the surprise of the first scent of night jasmine,
the circle dance of the bluebird pair, side-looking,
honeybees chanting over new lavender,
sounding their Om resonant into the garden.

These things we were made to bear together:
to hold our gaze to the beauty that breaks our hearts
for even as it enters into us,
we cannot embrace it all. 

May 14, 2020
SMS Meeting Poems

Yesterday, Dr. Paul Lindenfeld read "Manzanita Before Winter" written by Pos Moua, and available in his collection of poems, Karst Mountains Will Bloom.

May 6, 2020
SMS Meeting Poems
Mystery

Today's poem, read by David Bullard, PhD
Singularity (after Stephen Hawking) by Marie Howe

April 15, 2020
SMS Meeting Poems

Today, Dr. Paul Lindenfeld read the English translation of Hanohano Hanalei, The Glory of Hanalei, at the UCSF Symptom Management Service Meeting.  

Hanohano Hanalei/The Glory of Hanalei

Hanohano Hanalei i ka ua nui,          The glory of Hanalei is its heavy rain,

E pakika kahi limu o Manu'akepa.    Slippery seaweed of Manu'akepa.

I laila ho'i au i 'ike iho ai                    There I felt

I ka hana hu'i konikoni i ka 'ili.          Tingling cool sensation of the skin.

Aloha kahi one o pua rose                Greetings, O sand and rose flowers

I ka ho'opē 'ia e ka hunakai.             Drenched by sea spray.

'Akahi ho'i au a 'ike i ka nani.           Never have I seen such splendor.

Hanohano Hanalei i ka ua nui.          The glory of Hanalei is its heavy rain.

Kilakila kahi wai nā Molokama          Majestic streams of Molokama

I ke kau 'ia mai ho'i e ka 'ohu.          Mist-covered.

He 'ohu ho'i 'oe nō ka 'āina              You...

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March 12, 2020
SMS Meeting Poems
Love

Redwing Keyssar shared this poem via Commonweal Healing Circles:

Pandemic

What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.

And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.

Promise this world your love--
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.

--Lynn Ungar 3/11/20

March 11, 2020
SMS Meeting Poems
Love

The Raincoat

When the doctor suggested surgery
and a brace for all my youngest years,
my parents scrambled to take me
to massage therapy, deep tissue work,
osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine
unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,
and move more in a body unclouded
by pain. My mom would tell me to sing
songs to her the whole forty-five minute
drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-
five minutes back from physical therapy.
She’d say, even my voice sounded unfettered
by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,
because I thought she liked it. I never
asked her what she gave up to drive me,
or how her day was before this chore. Today,
at her age, I was driving myself home from yet
another spine appointment, singing along
to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,
and I saw a mom take her raincoat off
and give it to her young daughter when
a storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
that I never got wet.

~Ada Limon

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