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MERI Center Blog

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.