From A Street I Was Summoned!

Yesterday, while receiving my second dose of coronavirus vaccine, I was mesmerized by my injection nurse. It wasn't just the slight vocal twang from her upstate New York roots I recognized, nor her boogie-down Bronx style she inherited from three years interning at Bronx North Central Hospital. It was her body art that first "summoned" me. 

The upper arm tattoo of a masked nurse was three-quarters hidden by her shirt sleeve. I asked for a look-see and she proudly obliged. As you can see below, the tattoo is engaging to say the least. She explained the artwork was done in the Bronx, NY, and the nurse's face is actually made up of two female nurse faces, one on each side. 

Conversing so effortlessly as we were, I hadn't noticed the needle prick nor withdraw. It was the most unnoticeable injection I've ever had the displeasure of receiving. 

Here was a young nurse who loved nursing patients with a passion. When initially directed to her nursing station, I knew at first glance I was in the presence of a "summoned" soul, born to be at this place, at this hour, serving in this pandemic. 

You could tell from her relaxed confidence that her calling to be a nurse came as a revelation, probably while still a believer in Santa Claus. I picture her easily donning toy stethoscope and head lamp from Hasbro Milton Bradley Co.'s childhood board game, "Operation." 

Of course she would have assisted her older brother in surgery, methodically handing him surgical utensils in their mock operating room. Although she likely mastered the board game with graceful skill as a 5yr old surgeon specialist, something about assisting doctors, attending to patients and performing post-op procedures as a nurse appealed to her giving nature. Something had "summoned" her. 

To hear it told through the words of Chilean poet and Nobel Prize in Literature award winner, Pablo Neruda (1904-1973):

"I don't know how or when,
but from a street 
I was summoned."

Meaning, we all have God-given talents in us; some hidden, some obvious from an early age. When we are beckoned to apply/share our talent(s), it's as if in that instant the "heavens unfasten and open." We come face to face with our soul's purpose and destiny. We are free from choosing because it has chosen us. We are "summoned" to serve humanity.

I felt blessed to witness and receive her gift. Where would the world be without Nurses!

And it was at that age... Poetry arrived

in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where 

it came from, from winter or a river.

I don't know how or when,

no, they were not voices, they were not

words, nor silence,

but from a street I was summoned,

from branches of night,

abruptly from the others,

among violent fires

or returning alone,

there I was without a face

and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth

had no way

with names

my eyes were blind,

and something started in my soul,

fever or forgotten wings,

and I made my own way,

deciphering

that fire

and I wrote the first faint line,

faint, without substance, pure

nonsense,

pure wisdom

of someone who knows nothing,

and suddenly I saw

the heavens

unfastened

and open,

planets,

palpitating plantations,

shadow perforated,

riddled

with arrows, fire and flowers,

the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,

drunk with the great starry

void,

likeness, image of 

mystery,

I felt myself a pure part 

of the abyss,

I wheeled with the stars,

my heart broke free on the open sky.

Pablo Neruda

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