The Idea of Order in the Emergency Department

[Ann Emerg Med. 2009;54:298.]

Sometimes I think I could just as well⁎

Trade out diazepam and haloperidol

For Wallace Stevens.

Those patients, those souls, with tattered sails that barely hold

The wind that batters them about the senseless ocean of their lives,

May not need more order.

Nor less a calming of the winds

That would thereby strand them on some desolate shore.

I wonder if they instead were led to see

That misfortune is the mother of its own beauty

And that the brassy phrase of triumph rings

Most clear on trails where leaves of obliteration lead

Yet still to willows that shiver in the sun.…

In that transcendence, could they then

Sing beyond the genius of the sea they're in?

And in the idea of order

Unmask my psychotropic ordering to be

The motley poser, the mere complacency of the peignoir,

That it is?

On my last shift, when I tell

The truth to every patient I attract

I think my goal for the suicidal patients will

Not be placement or safety contract

Instead I will teach them to be

Birds with coppery, keen claws

And, without further talk, I'll wait until I see

Them flare

In the sun-pallor of their rock.