LIKE CHURCH

When
When do you
When do you find
When do you find time
When do you find time
To write?

Early in the morning.
Wife at church.
Kids asleep.
Computer on.
Another chapter, paper, poem.
Early.
On Sundays.
Like Church.


In 1994 I did a rotation at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. I thought, at the time, that I wanted to be a surgical oncologist. It was my first exposure to “REAL” surgeons. Not the gentleman farmers who did surgery as a hobby. Not the rich mamma’s boys who became doctors to please their parents. Not the frustrated jocks who took hammer and drill to broken old hips and arthritic knees. Not the dinosaurs who spent 4-5 months in Florida each year.

Real surgeons – who thought about surgery, read about surgery, dreamed and wrote about surgery. The thought leaders who operated and healed, who learned and taught, who read and knew. Dare I say…academic surgeons.

There I met D.E., head of GI surgical oncology, who mentored me through that rotation. He was a clean-cut Stephen Colbert look alike. He copied an article for me, insisting on doing it himself, turning the spine on the platen glass perfectly – no wasted space, no wasted time.

He closed out of a chapter he was writing on his computer to show me some data he was collecting on Medullary Carcinoma of the Thyroid. I asked him when he found the time to write. He told me Sunday mornings. Every Sunday morning – like church.

I woke up this morning and wrote propped on a pillow in bed. Even when I try, I usually can’t sleep in on Sunday mornings, too used to waking up early most other days of the week. So I wrote, in my journal, this poem, and another two verses of a poem I last looked at months ago. I wrote of a patient who haunts me, a dream I had, and I pondered adding yet another resolution to my lengthy list. Finally, I had answered a twelve year old question for myself. Sunday mornings – like church. Inevitably, this led to the birth of another related question…how do I fill the time that I am NOT writing?