writing. Stop

driving along scratching notes

on a piece of paper that keeps

falling off the dashboard.

Stop.

 

Take the little notepad off the ledge

beside the bed. Rip

up the notebooks.

Crack the pencils.

Forget words.

 

Don’t write about it.

 

Just watch the woman tie balloons

to the telephone pole stained with her son’s

blood. Don’t read the letters

“I love you”

on their Valentine red

hearts. Don’t write

this. Don’t fool yourself that someone will read this

and be changed.

 

Stop

the car.

Get out and stand beside her.

Look straight at her face.

 

Kelly grew up in New Hampshire, studied at Dartmouth College and Harvard Medical School and has been a pediatrician in inner-city Philadelphia for more than twenty years.  "Poetry keeps me sane. Almost." Her poems have been widely published over the past five years, including several book collections and chapbooks, and have appeared in numerous journals including Exquisite Corpse, Nimrod, Poet Lore, Rattle and the Journal of the American Medical Association.