Francis Christian
Saskatoon, Canada
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| Nonno watching the news. Jakob Montrasio. Taken on December 21, 2011. From Flickr. CC BY 2.0 |
Dust to dust and doom delivered
by newscasts dripping irony
in considered doses of despair;
feigning knowledge of ignorance,
feigning ignorance of absent panic
and knowledge from experts
claiming uncertainty.
But the web of knowledge weaves
chiffoned layers for me and you and John,
openly uncertain, uncertainly open
to imperfect measure of mortality.
Viral news tempered here
by tantrum of fierce competition
from other news summoned instantly.
I hear the grocer’s shelves are bare
I hear that the markets have dived.
A commercial consumes our screens
something about dog biscuits . . .
and then I hear as “breaking news”
that we are not to panic . . .
that since the last sip of coffee,
another four are dead.
FRANCIS CHRISTIAN, MD, FRCSEd, FRCSC, is a poet and a surgeon who lives in the Canadian prairie town of Saskatoon. He regards poetry and surgery as the right and left arms of his existence. His book of poems, “Amphibian And Other Poems” will be published by Harp Publishing and he is also the editor of the Journal of The Surgical Humanities.
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