A Man of Good Heart

Today I learned of the passing of a good man. Dr. John Stone, one of our 2007 Georgia Writers Hall of Fame Inductees, passed away yesterday. I haven't heard all the details yet, but I was told that he was very recently diagnosed with cancer.

Dr. Stone was an unusual poet. By that I mean that he was a cardiologist by profession, but a poet at heart. He taught at Emory University Medical School in Atlanta for years, became an associate dean there, and was later their director of admissions. During that time he published In the Country of Hearts: Journeys in the Art of Medicine. These twenty-three essays discuss our literal and our metaphorical hearts and he argues that the physician and the poet make use of the same materials.

I met Dr. Stone for the first time in April of 2007. To be honest, I'd never heard of him, not really being a fan of poetry. That changed, however, when Dr. Stone stood up to accept his award. He read us two poems that day. The one that follows was the first. Called Visitation, it describes a visit with his mother, who is in her nineties, at her retirement home.

Visitation

At Serenity Gardens, winter
has surrounded us. My mother's room
is way too warm for me,

just right for her -- with an extra sweater.
Outside, this uneasy year, her 93rd,
lurches through December.

She is surely serene in this place,
thanks to whatever goodness;
queen of the electronic piano.

Among my chief duties now
I have become her human calendar,
a stay against time, her reach for the past.

Each visit, we review the years.
We sit and we talk, fragile mother,
absent-minded son.

This afternoon, I assemble for her
some semblance of my long-dead
father, the only husband she had.

I tell her his story.
We study his photograph.
Do you remember him, I ask?

She looks again.
No, she answers softly. No.
But isn't he good looking!

She smiles. I chuckle.
In the gathering dark,
we cry a bit together:

I for what she has forgotten,
she for what I remember.

Hearing his soft voice, hearing the rhythms of his speech, made me understand the power of poetry. So much can be summed up in so few words, so few powerful words. In 2008 I purchased one of his books, Music from Apartment 8, and had him sign it for me. It reads "To Leandra, with gratitude for her friendship and in joy."

Thumbing through it tonight, I found this poem. It seems fitting and I'll leave you with it.

How I'd Have It

I'd have no flowers
other than Mozart

A suit -- blue --
not new, but worn

the knees
still in the trousers

for as long
as polyester is

And a fire
and someone there

to thrown on
the oak especially

for the last movement
of the Mozart

As for the mourners
let's have them enter

STAGE LEFT
and pause and peer

over the side
and say mournful

things such as What
A Pity A Pity

And So Old, Too
And then exit all

STAGE RIGHT