Clinic Day

The early car's mine.

I leave before the day

puts hardware on;

ride east all the way. I leave before the day

abandons slow calm.

Ride east all the way,

and now a storm abandons slow calm.

We pass the bridge

and now a storm

has torn the sky's edge. -- from Open LetterDiana Fitzgerald Bryden's second book of poetry, Clinic Day, (choreo)graphs the experiences and thoughts and feelings of three characters (The Secretary, The Surgeon, and a wanderer named - not inaptly - Blake), who perform a pas de trois of yearning and loss and occasional moments of grace. If at times the dance has a fevered quality, it is also, always, electrically alive and exquisitely shaped. In the clinic that lies at the heart of this unravelling day there is no panacea and no placebo, but there are the consolations of attending with clarity and honesty, and the healing powers of image and metaphor and wit.