I’ve watched you undress
from my room
across the way,
in the deep silence
of the snow.
I gaze at the buildings
around me that wake,
that speak to each other each day,
that nestle each evening
into the dark,
that sleep with each other
each night,
and I cannot help but feel
impoverished,
along with all the faces
that press against the panes
of all the windows on the street.
Gene Hirsch is a retired academic geriatrician who, for many years, has taught human values in patient care to medical students and doctors, recently at a hospice, with dying people.
He initiated and has taught in the writing program at John C. Campbell Folk School, Brasstown, NC, since 1992, when he co-founded NC Writers' Network West. He conducts seminars on subjects such as Expressing Human Need and Emotion, The Influence of Existential Meaning for the Poet.
Gene's poetry has been published in medical and non-medical journals such as: Pharos (Medical Honor Society), Journal of the American Medical Society, Consortium Ethics Program, Univ. of Pittsburgh, Fetishes (Univ. of Colorado), Hiram Poetry Review, Human Quest, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Anthologies include Atahita Journal, Blood & Bone (poems by physicians), Behavioral Medicine, Crossing Limits (Afro-American and Jewish poets), Tyranny of the Normal, and Echoes across the Blue Ridge. He produced five volumes of Freeing Jonah (poets of western NC). He is a member of the Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange.
