Summary:

Sea Creatures is Dr. Vernon Rowe's first collection and contains forty-eight poems divided into two sections: "Creatures of the Inland Seas" and "Out Far and In Deep." The poems are succinct and focused. Much of the imagery is derived from nature, as in the title poem, where the poet-neurologist-helicopter pilot likens his descent through the sky to a dive into a deep and ancient ocean. Poems in the first section are directly related to the poet's life as a physician; works such as "Paralyzed" "Brahms' First, First Movement" and "Wasted" are empathic portrayals of patients.

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This 14 line poem deals with a physician's compassion for a hopelessly ill patient ("An apparatus not for me to mend--") and his participation in active euthanasia. The patient, Annandale, was "a wreck . . . and I was there." The narrator asks the reader to view himself or herself "as I was, on the spot-- / with a slight kind of engine." (This "engine" is a hypodermic needle.) He concludes, "You wouldn't hang me? I thought not."

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In this long poem (47 quatrains), Annandale visits his doctor after years of absence and tells the doctor his story. When his wife Miriam died, he mourned her, "wept and said that all was done." Then he met Damaris, "who knows everything, / Knows how to find so much in me." Damaris, who became his second wife, comforts and accepts him. Even though sometimes "her complexities / Are restive" and she becomes angry, soon "She folds her paws and purrs again.

Annandale tells this story of late life happiness, then leaves the doctor's office. He never reaches home: "There was a sick crash in the street, / And after that there was no doubt, / Of what there was." In the last five quatrains, the doctor reflects on what he did for Annandale after the accident ("the one thing to do")--euthanasia.

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A wonderful poem about an old, dying man recognizing he is dying before any one else in the family will admit it. He wants them to help him die--a kind of family consensus on euthanasia, which he seems to control. After much family discussion, they agree to help him by giving him enough pills to "put him to sleep." He jokes with his family as they assist his dying: "On the day it would happen, the old man would be funny again: wolfing down handfuls of pills, 'I know this'll upset my stomach,' he'd say."

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The initial chapter in this novel, Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand (annotated separately), sets the stage for the quest of the young healer/heroine, "Snake," to find a replacement for the snake she had carelessly allowed to come to harm, in the course of caring for a seriously ill child. The remainder of this coming-of-age novel chronicles Snake's journey during her "proving year" (aka/residency training).

Over the course of this year, Snake continues to minister to the sick and encounters, among others, a patient who demands assistance in suicide, a patient who refuses treatment for a gangrenous leg, and a young girl who has been sexually abused (whom Snake eventually adopts and begins to apprentice). There are, as well, myriad lessons in humility, rigidity of thought, and ethnocentrism.

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These three short plays (approximately 30 minutes each) were commissioned for use in readers' theatre (see Commentary). Each addresses a specific patient/provider concern at the end of life. "Journey Into that Good Night" by Berry Barta is the story of a dying adolescent coming to terms with her mortality. Her physician demonstrates gratifying sensitivity in his understanding of her emotional struggle and the girl's mother progresses perceptibly in her own grief process in the course of the dialogues.

Marjorie Ellen Spence offers "Stars at the Break of Day," set in a nursing home where a middle aged man dying of cancer is confined. The reader meets a spectrum of elderly residents whose antics provide the humor necessary to keep the piece from becoming maudlin. There is discussion about assisted suicide as well as a view into one mode of accepting pain and impending, albeit untimely, death.

The third play, "Time to Go," by C. E. McClelland, is a fantasy which combines comic whimsy with a penetrating and profound sense of reality. The central issue is that of "letting go" of a son who has long lived in a persistent vegetative state following an accident. The victim's story is articulated in conversations between him and visiting "Friends" from another realm. Without introducing theology or politics, the conversations direct the reader to focus on the parents' reluctance to make a decision to discontinue life support.

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Condemned to death, Socrates, strong, calm and at peace, discusses the immortality of the soul. Surrounded by Crito, his grieving friends and students, he is teaching, philosophizing, and in fact, thanking the God of Health, Asclepius, for the hemlock brew which will insure a peaceful death. His last words are "a cock for Asclepius!"

The wife of Socrates can be seen grieving alone outside the chamber, dismissed for her weakness. Plato (not present when Socrates died) is depicted as an old man seated at the end of the bed. The pompous "medical celebrity"--as Tolstoy might describe him, were he one of Ivan Ilyich's five consults (The Death of Ivan Ilyich, see this database)--is pontificating on his rounds about the pharmacological details of the medication.

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In this little poem the narrator gives the reader permission to observe an appeal to a higher order for help in deciding how best to care for a ventilator-dependent patient. The narrator seems to be addressing Emma's creator to hear his concerns.

Emma now "lives as a swollen eggplant on its stem" although she was formerly strong and healthy. The poet develops the theme of organicity as the narrator makes his final case for guidance: "I must tend the leaf as best I can / and, anticipating other seasons, / turn the soil."

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A young farmer's mother is dying. The farmer, Honore, is concerned about his mother but he is even more concerned about getting his wheat in before the rains come. He is prepared to leave her to die alone, but at the insistence of the doctor agrees to hire Mother Rapet to tend his mother. Mother Rapet is an old washerwoman who supplements her income by watching the dying and preparing them for burial. La Rapet offers to work for Honore for a daily wage. Honore refuses, for he knows how obstinate his mother is and fears she will take a long time to die making La Rapet's services expensive. He insists on a set rate and La Rapet eventually agrees.

After three days, the mother still has not died and La Rapet realizes that she is losing money. Taking matters into her own hands, she tells the dying woman that at the moment before death everyone sees the devil. She then wraps herself in a blanket, puts a pot on her head, and throws a pail across the room making a huge noise. The dying woman thinks she is the devil and struggles to leap out of bed; instead, she collapses on the floor, dead.

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Summary:

Old Koskoosh was the chief of an Eskimo tribe. Now he is blind and lame, and his tribe is preparing to leave him alone in the snow to face his death as they travel on without him. His son leaves him a pile of sticks to feed the fire beside him. When the fire dies, so will he. As he waits alone for death, he thinks of the time he left his own father in the snow. He also remembers having seen a sick, old moose killed by wolves when it straggled behind the rest of the herd. "It was the law of all life," he decides. When he feels the cold nose of a wolf on him and hears the pack's footsteps surround him, he first fights them off, then gives in.

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