by Kathryn Eberly
For weeks
they are discussing
medical probate and
conservatorship to
the pleasantly disheveled
man with numerous wrinkled papers
which are always spread out on
the yellow hospital blanket
in his room as he in turn explains
stocks and bonds and barrel charts
and his trips to the bohemian grove
and other worldly adventures.
The whole time all day
every day he worries
about his fate and his freedom.
Doctors, nurses and social workers
are all about a locked ward and
dementia.
And so it’s a surprise to him
when abruptly he is
discharged to a hotel
in the Tenderloin.
Kathryn Eberly is a poet and former eligibility worker in San Francisco. After living in the Bay Area for many years she is now a transplant to Bangor Maine.