Dear Doctor,

Before the first quarter note
from the chorus you sing

delivers me musicals or psalms,
the day may irridesce

into an island razzle dazzle—
another Barukh atah Adonai

or a category six hurricane.
In your timbre: the certain heartbreak

or heart remake raging
at the end of a cordless line.

Doctor, may you be my once and only
dip into oncology and may this late

afternoon callback signal
our final sentences together.

Between us—the lamp of my life and
the diagnosis marks where I exist—

readied to return to the illuminated trees.

And so I set the phone to silence—
watch the kern as she crash-lands into the sea.

---

Susan Rich is an award-winning poet, editor and essayist. She is the author of four poetry collections including, most recently, Cloud Pharmacy and The Alchemist’s Kitchen. In addition, she co-edited, with Ilya Kaminsky, the anthology The Strangest of Theatres, published by the Poetry Foundation. Rich has received awards from Peace Corps Writers, PEN USA, and the Fulbright Foundation. Recent poems have appeared in the Harvard Review, New England Review, Poetry Ireland, and World Literature Today. Her fifth collection, Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry, Spring 2022. Visit her at poetsusanrich.com.