‘Nurse’

Dominique Carrillo-Pierce is a German-American writer, designer, and filmmaker. Her work has been featured in The Malahat Review, Panorama, Bombay Gin, Stone Canoe, WHLR, Bricolage, Miracle Monocle, and more.

Nurse

Who are my heroes, those who rocked the world

or those who left a trace of having been?

(Like anyone who ever had a kid.)

Or those who’re simply managing to live

in kindness when it must be difficult

after what they have lived through and survived?

(I know one or two like this, by the way.)

Sports heroes get paid. Soldiers too. They may

be great at their jobs, but unless they go

beyond the call of their profession, I

don’t think of them as heroes. Athletes who

get death threats in the outfield, Germany,

South Africa, sport on in spite of them,

bring home four golds, bring back the Davis Cup, 

and break a record or a barrier:

I cannot call them anything but heroes.

The same for those who help those in distress

instead of standing by and doing nothing,

get murdered for it, and are then maligned

by millions in league with the murderers.

Kindness should not require such bravery.

The world should not require so much adjustment.

But living in the world that is and trying

to help us all become what we could be

and should be and then losing your own life

for being, when required, both brave and kind,

by my definition, makes you our hero,

if not to those maligning you, at least

to me, the generations yet to come,

past generations watching from on high,

and any God I’ll meet or care to know.

for Jesse O, Jackie R., Arthur A.,
Hank A., Renée G., and Alex P. 

James B. Nicola is the author of eight collections of poetry, the latest three being Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists, and Natural Tendencies. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience: The Practical Actor’s Guide to Live Performance won a Choice magazine award.