Dr. Carpenter’s BLOG

From time to time I will be adding posts here.  Some will be short essays, some will be pictures or photographs, some will be poems.  All will touch on the topic of psychotherapy to some extent or other.  Current software permits no responses from readers on this page, although I would be interested in responses.  If you wish, you can email me your reactions:  info@DrJimCarpenter.com.

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Aftermath

Jim Carpenter

In the aftermath,

Some of Philip’s patients called me.  Needed

To be lied to, or at least hear things

That no one ever knew.  One round, brown headed

Woman feared he did not realize

She loved him.  I said he did, and no one could

Have loved him better in her place.  A thin

Man who never rested in a chair

Needed to know if he somehow pulled

The trigger.  I said absolutely not,

although I never learned what forces

did.  A girl who passed her shrieking hours

On her own slippery cliff of suicide

Now felt death as real as falling

Through the stairs, fell through me, landed

Like an acrobat with other helpers. 

Now 10 years later, this man starts

Our talk with Philip’s name.  He is short

Black hair springs forth from almost every

Inch of face and head.  No he was done

With therapy before his therapist

Was done with him.  The suicide was neither

Here nor there.  But lately there are dreams

and empty ringing nights.  He recalled

my name that he’d been given so he called.

First his brother, now his daddy, dead. 

Spook him out of sleep they joke, play tricks,

Or just walk by without a glance his way. 

He wakes afraid again.  Charles was so

Good looking, went off hunting with their daddy

And holds the trophy in this photograph.

“My daddy kept this in his wallet.”  His daddy

Didn’t like that he was smart and read

His mother’s books.  He passed in raging pain.

Death grabbed them young.  Has his life overstayed?

He gazes out the window silent.

I see the shotgun silver in his lap.

FORMER POST