June 5, 2014 "possible breathing"

First Words

      …thoughts of an anachronistic, solo pediatrician

                            by Glenn Feole, M.D.

"Be careful too that the reading of your story makes the melancholy 

        laugh and the merry laugh louder," Cervantes, Prologue to Don Quixote

Contact: ishmaelish36@gmail.com

Blog site: ishmaelish36.blogspot.com

June 5, 2014

Chief Complaint:

     "possible breathing"


Interesting Name:

     Toricious


Anecdote:

     I was examining a boisterous, active 15 month old boy as he spun around on the examining table, his Father standing close to the edge like a baseball catcher.  The Father was very poor, wearing  thread bare jeans with holes and a thin, tattered tee shirt, a myriad of densely packed tattoos cascading over his lean body.  He was a devoted Father...very friendly and eager to answer all of my questions.
      "How many words does he say," I asked gently.  He thought about it.  “Moma, Dadda…ball…bottle… hi.  He says a lot of words."  Pause.  "...I would guess…2,000.” 
      September, 2011, South Carolina


Poetry:

Queequeg

A sculpture of The Whale, in a great, eclectic bookstore in
Augusta

I left the dusky owls in their branches by the sea.

I left the orange floating moon, as big as a barn,

balanced on a fulcrum just under the waves of The Sound.

I changed my clothes in the silent moonlight by my bed 

and left to see a nurse's newborn, a midnight favor.

Ahead of me came sailing from a room a man,

a specimen from a circus in Philly, 1801.

He had no shirt, or shoes, and was gently wheeling the bassinet.

His skin was thick and tanned to a deep brown velvet.

His muscles were molded in flowing chiseled lines.

From his thin waist an explosion of lats, an erupting lily

a poised, top-heavy, inverted triangle of muscle

that kept me walking slowly behind him in awe, 

like the tired janitor who walked into Michaelangelo's studio 

that moonlit night and glanced up from his pile of stone dust.

This was his piece de resistance, his body.

He was covered by a flowing, detailed canvass of blue tatoos

from sternum to scapula, a symbolic script of his journey.

My crisp white shirt seemed stiff and dry.  I thought

his traveled chest, not mine, should say 'Land's End.' 

I remembered Ishmael and almost took off my shirt.

My torso a Grecian urn, a comic relief.

The nurses would notice my tenderly bulging love handles

that jiggled with each slow step, umbilicus disappearing 

into the daily deepening  hole of my gelatinous belly.  

And then I knew.  Of course.  Gentle Queequeg, 

gliding silently, unseen down the fluorescent hall  

a Native American, at one and graceful in bare feet,

and I was five, candy in hand, wide eyed 

as carnival jugglers danced by with their taunting smiles.

  Life sang out, clothed in its myriad mysteries. 

  He wheeled his son, his flesh, into the nursery. 

  A wide-eyed smile flashed out for the puzzled nurse.

  A glint of gold from two big hoops in his left ear

  flamed out, just like the other laughing harpooners. 

Glenn Feole

August 31, 1996

       Westport, Ct.

Coup d'essai ("first attempt")

     What can I say?  I use to read Melville's Moby Dick to my children most nights, my effort at being cultured and literate, having physically dispensed of our TV for a large part of their childhood.  Even now they know how many chapters there are in this book, who the protagonist is, and who the captain's side kick is.  (Spoiler: 135, Captain Ahab, Starbuck).  And of course, Queequeg.  Reading the first chapter, you get hooked with the humor, the suspenseful plot and the beautiful writing style.  It almost, but not quite, supplants Don Quixote, although the idea seems sacrilegious. 

     "Possible breathing" is a enviable goal for any doctor.  It is good to have goals.  

     The etymology of "Toricious" escapes me but may have something to do with the 

Scandinavian god Thor, or perhaps the Latin "torus" for bull.