Covid Ward Sentinel

Jim Benton

February 18, 2022

Covid-19 Visitor Guidelines:

One visitor once per day, up to 2 hours during normal visiting hours. If physician determines it unsafe for a patient to have visitors, we will provide virtual tools for visitation.

I am the gatekeeper

the one outside the door

setting the edge between you

and your own — dying.

On the other side

your life fades gasping away

edging further away from you

with every ventilating pulse.

You would give your life

to hold the hand of your life

who lies beyond the gate,

but I must keep you away.

I must keep you safe

from life’s contagious breath,

robber of breath, inhaling

and exhaling death.

I must explain the inexplicable,

inflate the horror of dying

to the terror of dying alone

at both edges of the gate I tend.

The final isolation is stayed

by the choking isolations of mask

and distance and fear

and yearlong months alone

outside the gate

standing helpless at the edge.

I am the gatekeeper

the separation, the life preserver.

Saving you from what?

Your life is already leaking away,

and death is the only thing

that passes through the gate.

Jim Benton is a retired high school teacher whose best career moments were teaching students to see and write poetry. In retirement, he has given more time to his own writing and has published twenty-odd poems over the last decade or so. He lives in Denton, TX.