The Chiropractor

The clinic stood at the top of a mountain 

Where each more distant row of peaks

Was a paler shade of blue. On the wall

The icon of the spine was carved in stone

And flanked with laurel leaves.

The chiropractor probed the tender skin

Below the jaw. His fingers climbed 

The dimples of the vertebrae,

And then he lay his palm upon his hand

And slammed the small of the back.

In the lobby there were pictures on the wall

Of the doctor hunting wildebeest in Africa. 

He has been dead for years.

It would be long before I heard such words

As "quackery" or "placebo."

But when the ribbons of the wind 

Form long and narrow clouds 

That span across the sky,

I think our planet has a backbone

That holds horizon to horizon.

And I recall a poster on the wall

In a gentle, gloomy corner of the clinic.

It was a bridge across a humbling wood,

With words that read to childhood's eyes

A solemn, stirring creed:

Give the world your best 

And the best will come back to you.

Reviews

[barleygirl]

As Eilis mentions, your pacing stands out first and foremost. Usually when writers feel passionately about a point, it comes across as harsh & strident, maybe hurried or cluttered. It's the simple calmness you convey that makes it easier to take in all the possibilities your message implies. For me, the remarkable metaphor is that anything that goes wrong in the backbone typically screws up all kinds of areas of the body . . . thus, when the planet is out of balance (((HUGS)))

[Casey Truax]

I was more interested in exploring a memory than in sending a message. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. :)

[Shelley Warner]

I like how you use the backbone as a metaphor for the world. I could really see what you described, especially the photograph of the doctor with the dead wildebeast.

[Eilis]

I enjoy the quiet depth of your work. You have a way of offering things as kinds of questions for the reader to answer. Sharing experience—but as we know when something goes out from us and makes contact with others it becomes something new. I like the gentle pace you’ve used. It reminded me of the feeling of being a child and being mystified but maybe also bored because the things I was encountering seemed so far outside the realm of imagination. The sterility of prosaic things that nevertheless become important parts of our narrative. The story you tell and the words you’ve chosen to tell it create a beautiful duality for me. The objectivity of the adult that still remembers enough of childhood to say how something felt. There’s a peace but it’s tenuous. Like the speaker understands the adage at the end only holds so much weight. A shattering of ideals is perhaps coming but for now there is room to be free in the ‘humbling wood’—what lovely phrasing. That really caught me here. But the preciseness of your word choices and the omission of the personal pronoun also struck. It’s the child meeting the adult and neither one exactly recognizing the other. At least that was my impression. I really enjoyed reading this poem.

[Casey Truax]

It is always a pleasure to hear from you. I do try to convey a message while still giving my readers enough room to ponder and interpret for themselves. Many of my poems are in this category of revisiting childhood memories from an adult perspective. You describe this strange encounter in a beautiful way.