Therapist

I write a lot of poems about being a therapist, I spend a lot of my time as a therapist asking my clients to simply be, to be with what is.

Therapist


Sometimes I offer what any tolerant passenger
might on a puddle jumper from Seattle to Sacramento,
nods and interest, a few curious questions.
I repeat advice that could be garnered from women’s magazine
but with more grandeur and gravitas.

Sometimes I cry when my client can’t,
tears that start in the center of my brain,
nerve gas, stinging my eyes,
little springs that pool before spilling.

I try to perforate my client’s
breast plates of resistance,
I wear a haz mat suit and contain cortisol.
My decks are awash with their indecision,
I want them to leave their partners,
I want them to forgive and try harder.

The men are the most difficult
with their armored agreeability,
their hidden score cards.
No wait the women,
with their levees and lists,
their apologies, I guesses and don’t knows.
No it could be the children
who only want to hide toy figures in my play sand.

I am the Goddess of Destruction Kali
with eight arms offering eight conflicting interventions.
I am Quan Yin rolling joints with lotus leaves.
I am medic, surgeon, nurse,
before it gets better, I might make it worse.
I am hugging clients on their request,
I am allowing space as my bequest.

Lead birds take turns as they fly.
Ornithologists suggest murmuration,
the phenomenon of birds in a flock moving at once,
has more to do with physics than biology.
They call it a phase transition,
it’s what I do hour after hour.
A slight turn, a pivot.
In my seat I sink and I rise,
suggesting mostly pelvis and patience.
I am rolling my rolling chair backward,
I am rolling forward.