An excerpt from Asphodel, That Greeny Flower
by William Carlos Williams

My heart rouses
   thinking to bring you news
      of something
that concerns you
   and concerns many men.  Look at
      what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
   despised poems.
      It is difficult
to get the news from poems
   yet men die miserably every day
      for lack
of what is found there. 

Found in an interview with Physician Valerie Berry by Len Anderson

LA: Is poetry also a healing art?

VB: I think all arts heal. Sometimes it takes us a while to recognize how, especially when the initial experience of it makes us uncomfortable or leaves us perplexed or angry. I’m reminded of surgery. For me, the sacred moment in surgery is when you hold the scalpel above the unmarked, intact skin. You know that once you cut, it will never be the same, no matter how well it heals–yet the healing can’t begin until the surgery opens the patient, reveals what’s wrong. I think art does that.

Somehow I imagined the sacred moment being when the procedures are finished successfully and all and the tools are accounted for….

Can’t wait to start my next incident response and say “let’s savor this sacred moment — the healing can’t begin until we start cutting”.