I just spent the last 6 weeks in the hospital, trawling the wards and ER and operating theaters, looking for things to do as a lowly medical student, other than using the hand sanitizers. One of my best experiences was while awkwardly interviewing a very cultured patient. He had a book sitting by his side, so in an attempt to connect, I asked him what he was reading. This was how I was introduced to Billy Collins, apparently one of America’s foremost modern poets. As my patient’s nurse came in to deliver his meds on a trolley, he chucked the book at me and said, “You can read it while you’re waiting.”
So I nestled into the hard hospital chair opposite from him and flipped open to ‘Genesis’ —
“It was late, of course,
just the two of us still at the table
working on a second bottle of wine
when you speculated that maybe Eve came first
and Adam began as a rib
that leaped out of her side one paradisal afternoon.
Maybe, I remember saying,
because much was possible back then,
and I mentioned the talking snake
and the giraffes sticking their necks out of the ark,
their noses up in the pouring Old Testament rain.
I like a man with a flexible mind, you said then,
lifting your candlelit glass to me
and I raised mine to you and began to wonder
what life would be like as one your ribs–
to be with you all the time,
riding under your blouse and skin,
caged under the soft weight of your breasts,
your favorite rib, I am assuming,
if you ever bothered to stop and count them
which is just what I did later that night
after you had fallen asleep
and we were fitted tightly back to front,
your long legs against the length of mine,
my fingers doing the crazy numbering that comes of love.”
Enchanted by the first poem in a long time which I actually enjoyed, I went and borrowed the book from the library and read the same poem out loud to the newest intern in my lab yesterday. (She sits opposite me, and usually anyone who sits opposite me in lab, inadvertently gets a show-and-tell of my life, and moment-by-moment recaps of the highlights. I think I do them a favor, but I’ve never actually asked.) She politely agreed that she liked the poem very much, and we somehow meandered our way into her retelling her version of Genesis to me:
“”Eve eats the poison apple of temptation, and then God gets angry, and they are naked, and God casts them out of paradise and they need to work. Oh, and then they have lots of babies or something.”
After I finished sniggering and wiping tears from my eyes and looked up at her, she defensively exclaimed:
“Clearly I am a heathen!”
I love heathens 🙂 They have the best interpretations of Genesis.
thethirdfail 