Elizabeth J. Coleman
A Long Line in Manhattan on a Glorious Autumn Day
I ask the man behind us if he’s a doctor.
I wish I were, he laughs.
He has a degree in psychology, but a musician now,
has been transcribing Bach cello
suites for bass guitar during quarantine.
He loves the low resonant tones
of both instruments.
I picture him in blue scrubs
with his salt and pepper hair,
and an earring in each ear,
striding, mellow
through the E.R.,
stopping by my bed,
taking time to comfort me.
Soon he’ll move to Roosevelt Island,
with his wife and baby,
from one room to two.
My father did his residency
in its hospital torn down years ago,
I tell him.
They’re moving into the old lunatic asylum.
Four hours later,
he hands me his phone
so I can listen to him play, forget
in that moment
not to touch a stranger’s things
in a pandemic.
Anyway, it feels like he’s a doctor,
my doctor,
and by now I have
complete trust in the man
with the salt and pepper hair,
and an earring in each ear,
listen to him play guitar,
his vibrato so like song,
so like a human voice,
Purell my hands,
stride into the booth.
—Submitted on 01/29/2021
Elizabeth J. Coleman is the author of The Fifth Generation (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2016), Proof (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2014), Let My Ears Be Open (Finishing Line Press, 2013), and The Saint of Lost Things (Word Temple Press, 2009). She is the translator of Pythagore, Amoureux, a translation into French in a bilingual edition of Pythagoras in Love by Lee Slonimsky (Folded Word Press, 2015). Coleman is the editor of the anthology Here: Poems for the Planet (Copper Canyon Press, 2019). Her poems appear in Colorado Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Rattle, and other journals. Coleman’s poems appear in Together in a Sudden Strangeness: American Poets Respond to the Pandemic (Knopf, 2020), Know Me Here: An Anthology of Poetry by Women (Word Temple Press, 2017), Poetry in Medicine Anthology (Persea Books, 2014), and other anthologies.
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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993.
