a makeshift affair more like a ragged tent in the desert the poles securing its future were all awry as if constructed in haste and at night like a poorly lit narrow lane of a forgotten town astride an uncharted desert its inhabitants vagrants with no compass on the lands of their birth
filled with all manner of men and brethren and children who come and go at random undisciplined as stray cats
icons of saints compete with images of sinners and decorate sallow flapping walls as winds rage outside in a summer storm
maladies antique and other later forms of plague untamed and unspecified in any lexicon of medicine or tome of knowledge rusting on a library shelf of dust in Alexandria or Rome
as in all infirmaries nurses carry fragile lanterns of hope as delicate as Dresden china, the mere breeze of misfortune will put them out as eyes in the desert weary as time dries up but well before their hope flickers refracted in soft cheeks of comfort and eyes of compassion quelling oceans of suffering
weary physicians traipsing the tenets of their profession grasp true to a Grecian oath of a near forgotten age in the Temple of Aesclypius
more a burden than an inspriration in their days of toil
the comfort of a single word of hope more potent than any tincture of time
Flynnpoetry 