Finding Lost Pond by Pamela Mitchell

There is a wide range of deep feelings here, apprehended out of the enchanting confusion of life and funneled into a special kind of language on the page. Clearly, this is a nurse writing. Clearly, before she was a nurse she had a deep appreciation for healing interactions among humans, for the particularity of nature, and for the often perplexing relationship between life and death—characteristics which can only be further amplified by the examined life at the bedside. She speaks of addiction, of suicide, of children, of boats on the pond, of laughter, and the magic of healing hands, always with attention to detail and a ruthless honesty that turns ultimately upon herself, her personal life, and her imaginative connection to her own death. A good read, this. You will feel as if you’ve seen some things in new light.

–David Watts, M.D. author of Bedside Manners and Having and Keeping

The first poem in Pamela Mitchell’s “Finding Lost Pond” asks “what if . . . ” What if we recognized caring for others as “sacred work?” What if we “blessed” the hands of nurses and doctors before they begin their work of healing? This collection shines and sings, helping us to see the beauty in suffering and the spirit within the human body, lessons the poet learned during the years of her dedication to nursing. As she once helped patients, holding them in “gentle synchrony,” she now helps us “search for the song” embedded in her poems. Mitchell writes about the human body and about the natural world which reflects our lives—our flaws, our beauty, our seasons, our perfections. She doesn’t shy away from the depths of despair; she is always aware of the presence of grace. These are fierce and loving poems.

–Cortney Davis, author of I Hear Their Voices Singing: New & Selected Poems

I dare you to read this book with dry eyes. I can’t. The poet carries us through the vagaries of ailing bodies — those of patients, family and friends, even herself — with a keen blade sharpened on the whetstone of grief. But these poems float, they do not sink. They are spaced like clouds drifting on a familiar landscape. They lift gloriously into the possible, into the saving grace of children building a nursery for frogs, into the “laughter slipped in/ through the back door.” Mitchell finds hope in these meditations, locating new birth in unexpected places, even in “water lilies whose umbilical stems run deep.” Reading these poems, I am connected more profoundly with all humanity, despite the ragged edges of our suffering. I am blessed to live upon the earth, to witness the call of a gull, as a minke whale “knits the ocean/ into my soul.”

–Carol Barrett, Ph.D., Author of Drawing Lessons, Calling in the Bones and Pansies