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 Letter”

Diana 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.