Metamorphosis
by Dr. Lloyd Jacobs
The old surgeon becomes a poet
by a slow metamorphosis, led
to cease doing and vouchsafed
a spirit of letting be
The patient, etherized upon a table
becomes a thing, a holy thing alive
like the garden grub or the meadow
oak, acquiescent, trusting, singing
The surgeon, increasingly loath
to promethean trespass
is drawn into sympathy
with that world of living things and
is changed forever.
Dr. Lloyd Jacobs is President Emeritus of The University of Toledo. He has published 3 collections of poetry and was previously a professor of vascular surgery at the University of Michigan.
