Three Disintegrated Sonnets

2. Doctoring: Hyderabad/NYC

for Abbas Husain, MD [ June 2020 ]

“What is essential is invisible to the eye.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
 
Supposing I could see that lion city, city
of gardens, city of pearls: I’d like to meet
the man the neighborhood calls Doctor Uncle, 
his daily scalding cup of milk tea and the street

​

his steady stream of patients enter from. As soon
as stay-at-home orders lift, he’s back to work,
at ninety: scribbles notes, and swivels to see
the next mother and kid. Across the dark

​

Atlantic in the city by the sea, Abbas doctors 
as his grandfather instructed: Listen. Look
in their eye, look in their ear. You may not
be able to answer every question, but let them

​

       be heard. Abbas says the ER 
       is a place of refuge. Its glow

is yellow, the need of presence: receiving people
on the worst day of their life. Listen, look:
He says, even if your mother doesn’t 
       love you, you can still walk into the ER.

​

ABBY MINOR