HARP Publisher and Author – A Relationship

And then in 2025, John Graham-Pole was reviewing his poems dating back to the early days of the Arts in Medicine Program at University of Florida, which he co-founded in 1991.  He came upon his poem Healing Dance, which records the beginning of his relationship with Stuart Pimsler, who “stepped” onto the Atrium in Shands Hospital to choreograph the first act in this new program, featuring John and a nurse in a  caregiver dance. They slowly drew in an astonished and captivated audience.   Here is John’s poem:

Healing Dance

Five feet, fifty kilo, this nurse hoists me easily onto

her back’s keel. Stretched out on her taut strut,

I draw in the sweat, fresh as lilies. I rock, slip,

brace, heft, await my turn to tote her light might.

We pause to take in the director’s voice, repeat

each step of his choreography. Her eyelids drop

to her delicate rubbing of index and thumb pulp on

her pen, the back-and-forth motion of each digit.

Her eyes are dressed in a hot rose coat, resonant of

summer’s heat and shadow. We are silent but for

our gasping breaths, and the steady click, click, of

that up-down rhythm on the breast of her scrubs.

Below the four-point pin decked with amber

and emerald stone, her fingers flex and ease,

voluptuously flex and ease, as she rests her wrist’s

weight upon her thigh,  lips pouted in thought.