Medicine and the humanities meet...and the result is poetry

This morning

Walking down Euclid, that name
which puts me forever in mind of angles and arcs,
I saw a young boy walking with his mother,
'Spastic,' the official term,
so monstrously unfitting:
His arms were kept
clenched closely to his body,
As if he were cradling himself;
His face was like an empty plate,
that youthful newness
still aching to be piled with good things--
Skin china-fine, and equally as pale,
through which I could see his bones
and the meandering tributaries
of his veins.
His geometry was warped,
angles acute,
The delicate spine's arc
twisting to the right--
and yet he walked on two
straight, honest legs
past me and on
into the morning light.
-AG