Although I Am the One Sent to Help

On the sofa you are rounded beneath
your afghan, knees drawn toward
the source of your fever. The room
wavers with your heat.  And this

is where I come in, blue around the lips
and bent by the darkness of this mid-
afternoon. Between the hallway’s doors,
I bang the snow from my boots, shake

the weather from the wool vaults
of my hat and coat.  Even so, I move
toward you like a storm. But if I am
a specter of winter’s frozen gloom,

you never let on, and reaching
for my hands, you offer to warm them.                                       

Over the years of my home visits as a Medical Social Worker, I was constantly amazed and grateful to the patients I had the privilege to serve.

The poem here attempts to capture the generosity of our patients, despite their illness or isolation or overwhelming needs … in this case, a  visit on a miserable, stormy, mid-winter day.

Patricia O’Brien
Old Saybrook Poet Laureate