Things We Don't See

Wind on the window pane
Mental mathematics
The running rapid of water
      when the stream bed is dry
The thumb prints in the pie crust edge
Love for someone who's out-of-town
Sleep that is suspended
      curled in the lucid arms of a dream
The edge of a table before it meets our hand
Muscle memory that puts the cane
      in touch with the tarmac
Healing edges that mend during the night
      under a cushion of white gauze
The spot where the rainbow begins and ends

Judy Schaefer, a national hemophilia nurse specialist for Olsten Health Services and part time Penn State Lecturer, is the author of Harvesting the Dew (Vista, 1997) and co-editor, with Cortney Davis, of the first-ever international anthology of creative writing by nurses, Between the Heartbeats (Univ. of Iowa Press, 1995). She has been published in journals such as The Lancet, Academic Medicine, and The American Journal of Nursing, and is active with two medically related literary journals, Wild Onions (Penn State Univ. College of Medicine) and Mediphors (Bloomsburg, Penn.). She is a member of The Kienle Center for Humanistic Medicine and Sigma Theta Tau International Nursing Honor Society. She lectures widely in the United States and abroad.

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