I walk quiet as the trees
transplanted alpine ponderosa
stunted at altitude they stay short
in Denver as though their genes
were trimmed long needles sculpt
air horizontal as supplicant palms
wind stirs the tall spruce around them but
these squat pines barely move
leaving blue sky unmarred a wide
radiance after such a long gray winter
thick with weather and sickness
I choose a bench long familiar
refuge after each divorce crushed beneath
such failure the rigor of child-rearing
alone fifteen years plus
a punishing career decades of
autopsies on dead children
diagnosing malignant tumors
that decision to be a pediatric pathologist
makes the choice of husbands––both bad
and bad for me compared to medicine
my marriages look brilliant
sky hazes now mountain-horizon littered with
stub pines distant toothed and screaming
Copyright 2016, Gail Waldstein
A pediatric pathologist for 35 years, Gail Waldstein’s poetry has appeared in Nimrod, Harpur Palate, MacGuffin, Switched-On Gutenberg, and The Examined Life. She won first prize for Poetry in the 2013 Faulkner/Wisdom competition. Her poem, “The Hauntings,” won the Swan Scythe Chapbook Contest in 2014.