James Mclain Poet Rhyme

The Clinical Role Of The Reader

I have ever preferred the quiet rooms—
The whitewashed walls that answer not,
The polished steel, the waiting table,
Where memory grows faint and thought grows hot.

Do not mistake me—I am clinically gentle.
Order is my only creed.
I name the parts; I weigh the silence;
I catalog each mortal need.

The living are so terribly noisy—
Blood like thunder in the ear—
But stillness… ah, the blessed stillness
Is music exquisitely clear.

They say I lack what others cherish.
They say my gaze is hard and cruel.
But I see structure. 
I see balance.
I see the symmetry of God.

There was a girl—there is always a girl—
Unclaimed by name, untouched by prayer.
She lay as if in mild repose,
A question trembling in the air.

I told myself I studied endings,
That science was my guiding star;
Yet in the glass above the table
Another face was never far.

It watched me with a patient horror—
A look I could not quite defend.
And slowly, with a dawning terror,
I knew that face would be my end.

For what I sought in lifeless forms
Was not their mystery—but mine;
And in dissecting mortal silence
I crossed a far more fatal line.

The room is quiet now—too quiet.
The lamps burn low. 
The air grows thin.
I hear a knock from somewhere there.
It is not seeking to come in.
It has been here all along.

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