The Nut House

The ride to the psycho ward
took eternities. I napped.
When I got there, 
I looked for cigarettes.
No one had any cigarettes - it was late,
everyone was in bed.
I found the ashtrays in the smoking room.
There were 4 half smoked butts.
I pulled them out,
smoked each one with long drags,
purposefully, pleasurably.
I was still drugged out
and the breeze through the window
was soft and the room was quiet.
I went to bed.
The next day, I woke up before 9.
I went out and talked to the doctors.
They were reasonable.
One even seemed lovable,
with tiny wrists
and dainty long fingers
that seemed so delicate
and fragile, able to hold
the problems of the world.
They said they didn’t think I was crazy,
maybe a little,
but not locked-up-crazy.
I had to wait for the doctor.
I met with a spiritual counselor.
She said my spirit was nice.
I looked out the window
and saw the lake of Zurich,
blue and placid
with tiny sail boats floating over it all,
slowly, like the clouds.
On the hills below me were vineyards
with their grapes still green
in the height of summer.
Across the lake were the forested hills,
and below, in the left of the window
were the hard stone Alps,
with Zurich in the upper right side
singing with its bells
and dazzle.
It seems a shame
that a person should have to go insane
to finally get a view like that.
And I thought about how many people
will never know the beauty
of perfectly delicate hands
capable of saving lives
from the jaws of defeat,
and I thought about how
it’s a god damned sin
that the worst of us
always get the best of it all.
When I left,
I asked the attendant at the nurses’ station
to give Tom his American T-Shirt back,
and to say thank you for me,
that it had been very kind of him
to make me feel at home
in the nut house.