Can you hear me?

The static is slight at first, a buzzing in the background, like a distant sound machine,

Used for sleep, or to muffle streets, fill waiting rooms,

White noise, zeroes and ones,

How does one find transference when connection is spanned through telephone 

lines, a fiber optic reverie, an image of the patient, the analyst, like a day dream filling in the emptiness of vision,

A lack of smell, no usual waiting room, buzzer to get in,

Hoping to find, be found,

Fearing a broken bridge.

News reports of infections in the hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands, an escalation eventually to a million worldwide, and climbing,

Along with heart rates, blood pressure, growing pressure and closing space,

Imagining that each number is a person, a whole internal world, feels like too much to 

bear,

Just bear the patient’s pain, and one’s own, as a start, 

And sometimes this task, too, feels like a bear,

Wooly and with teeth,

Hibernation in Spring time,

Looking for a soft underbelly,

We hide from Corona— a punishing sun,

Hoping that enough warmth makes its way.

HIPAA compliance and consent to tele-health and how do you send a bill electronically and is it safe to receive a paper check,

And other ripe grounds for obsessing, compulsively— attempted brief flights from an enveloping uncertainty.

And yet…

Amidst the buzzing, the tightness, the unknown—always there, now, more apparent—a 

connection is made, a window in a cave:

Yes.  And can you hear me?

I can… now what can we make of this dream,

As ever, let’s see what comes to mind.