In Med School the professor lectured
the heart is a pump pure and simple.

Yet, it ranks as the toughest of all organs,
beating nonstop, through all kinds of stress

for upwards of one hundred years.
Yet, when weakened, an electrical impulse

from within can trigger a heart to become
erratic and to fibrillate helplessly.

An apparent Hercules in the prime of his life,
can collapse and succumb in seconds.

Most days the work of the heart doctor is
rewarding. Imagine the satisfaction of opening

a blocked artery, a feat that would have led
your mentors to throw up their hands in amazement.

Think of the thrill of seeing your patient,
who’d lingered at death’s door, finish a road race.

But there are also those days when nothing works
and all our high-tech tools prove useless.

That long walk to the waiting room, to sit
face to face with loved ones, who stare back

in shock and disbelief, as you try to soften
the blow, that their loved one is gone.

That walk I never want to take again.

 

Robert Paul Allen lives on a lake near the coast of Maine in an inspirational setting. He has published over 50 poems. He has written two chapbooks “Between the Panes” and more recently “Full Circle” published in June 2025.