52) The Hospice Nurse’s Last Will

       Wolran Kim

The flowers,like patients who just checked in yesterday

Thrust out of branches in the tree hospital, it is spring

The season of facing death often comes between seasons

My comforting the patients was magic words for me

I still don’t know the meaning of the last

How could I know the difference between knowing and facing

I once missed an incurable disease which would come to me

Thick growth on the barren land, nostalgia as a cancer

Such as a sister of St. Bernard in the Pennine Alps

I pat the holy land of my mind with my palms together

To be the last place to rest for the travelers

I always smiled as the gatekeeper

The bed sheets as neat head towels

Were the snow from the sky covering mountains and streams

For constant sickness in a bed of a lifetime

Waiting for the day of complete recovery

Just like the terminal patients who lay under my exhausted waist

I am finally laying down under your heart

Life, is what I want to answer even though no one asks me

No one ever asks me what it is

In the space of an examination room, the spring flowers

Are flying through the window as if they just woke up from anesthesia