Chamber Music

This is only the second guest poet I have posted here at Poyetry; Jeff Flynn, a colleague of mine, wrote this excellent poem, inspired after reading about cardiomyapathy in Doberman Pinschers.

CHAMBER MUSIC

after reading articles by Nancy Morris, DVM & Dr. Carmen L. Battaglia
in the Doberman Pinscher Magazine

Between diastole and systole worlds exist and lives are lived.
How many rooms and light filled atriums will she pass through
While the measure of her heart is taken?
And what import will she place on her fractional shortening value?

Between premature heart beats, eternity.
Her heart's an edifice of many rooms, and
Between atria and ventricles
Septa resist the assaults of time.

While the aortic whoosh rattles those walls,
And VPC's are tallied,
Singular, couplets, triplets...
And time asserts its claim,

Measure her life not by the number of its beats,
But by the music that echoes between them.


By Jeff Flynn
March, 2009

Image is courtesy of WestminsterKennelClub.org