We are very lucky to host two remarkable poems by Art Historian Christine Bentley, who has collaborated with HMS's Training the Eye course (pioneered By neurologist Shah Khoshbin and internist Joel Katz), and more recently with the Center for Visual Arts In Healthcare at Brigham & Women's Hospital. She holds a PhD in Art History and is a Professor of Art at Missouri Southern State University. She has been writing and reading poetry since childhood. She adores words, myth, travel, trees, and chats with family and friends. She sees a world filled with opportunities for poetic wisdom every day. As an Art Historian, with research centered in the Medical Humanities, she is pulled toward a variety of artful expressions to enrich human connections. She remains curious about the world and is inspired by those whose path touches hers in impactful ways. We are gracious two have two of her own poems set in conjunction with paintings she has selected to reflect upon.
EGYPT
She looks
at me
from crisp linens
on the hospital bed.
Her flawless
oak skin
contrasts sharply
against the white sheets.
The monitor's
repetitive,
punctuated,
beep
unnerves me
as I wait next to her.
I wait,
listening
for the rasping cough to pause
and her voice to settle.
She whispers
as the nurse brings in
an IV bag
full of antibiotics.
Her words
are static
through the mucus,
sludge coating her lungs,
taking her life to live.
The unwanted thriving
inside the loved.
She seems
better today,
color has returned,
with hints of rose in her cheeks.
She mentions the future,
as she talks of Egypt,
a hopeful graduation gift
after commencement.
A childhood dream
come true,
an adventure to fuel
her wanderlust.
I glance
at her again,
unsettling hospital
aromas wafting,
wrapped in plastic tubes
and IV feeder.
Unable to sustain
her own life...
her own life,
at twenty.
Helene Schjerfbeck, Clothes Drying, 1883, oil on canvas
Pinwheel
He told me colors
spin in his mind
when he gets angry,
or his thinking wary,
similar to the pinwheel
planted in Mother’s garden
or the ribbons wrapped
round the maypole.
His colors don’t stop,
they ripple through
his body making
his veins squirm
and his thoughts glow
from an iridescent halo
formed by the vibrating
palette of warms and cools.
His thoughts spin and sing,
pumping known unknowns
into the fast electronics
growing myth within
his zig-zagging mind,
making him think
the misplaced puzzle pieces
are rightfully oriented
in their upside down
twisted narratives,
where all the characters
rage in unison in his Greek chorus.
Wassily Kandinsky, Composition VII, 1913, oil on canvas
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