May 2022
Author's Note: I've been in the military, served during a war, but never on the front lines, though friends of mine did. Nobody comes home without scars. My current work as a Psych Nurse Practioner in a jail puts me in frequent contact with people whose invisible wounds still bleed, but nobody wants to talk about it. Therefore, this poem.
at work we never talk of war
there is so much happening
every minute of every day
someone having a crisis
or causing a catastrophe
the radio shouts at us
"mental health, call quad C"
"mental health, i have one
threatening to kill himself"
"mental health... mental health..."
i don't dare announce that
i'm on my lunch break because
that would be callous, so
i respond while my lunch cools
thinking that even if it costs
my employers an extra hour of time
it has to be done, food can wait
we chart mostly in silence
until i can't handle the quiet
and dial up some blues on youtube
anything to keep me from getting
too wrapped up in solving problems—
that would come at my own expense
the final minutes of the day
slip by and the time clock chimes
as i swipe my badge to prove i was there
only when i am outside again
and the blue sky over yellow anything
pulls me back to ukraine's fields
news updating by the minute it seems
convoys and sanctions and SWIFT
and EU and NATO and Switzerland
breaking its neutrality
it's all right there in my face,
in my ears, in my thoughts, my heart
but at work we never talk of war—
too many broken minds to try and save
©2022 Jim Lewis
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