Welcome to Poetically Yours. Poetically Yours normally showcases poems written by Illinois poets. This week's poet is from Fort Worth Texas.
Ashraf Reyad is a multi-organ transplant surgeon, dually board certified by The American Board of Surgery and The Intercollegiate Royal College of Surgeons. During his fellowship training at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland he was part of the surgical team performing the first HIV positive to HIV positive kidney transplants (HOPE Act) in the United States, and the first HIV positive to HIV positive liver transplant in the world. His expertise includes managing highly immuno-sensitized patients, ABO blood group incompatible transplants, hyper-coagulable patients, as well as the care of patients with multiple prior organ transplantations.
Ashraf penned his first poem during high school in Dubai, U.A.E., where he grew up. He was continually inspired to write during medical school and encountering his first patients as a physician in Dublin, Ireland. He published his first collection of poems in 2018 titled, "I am Pseudo." This work can be found on Amazon.
Ashraf currently works and resides in Fort Worth, Texas with his wife, Cassandra, their son, and their three cats. Today he shares his poem "Leaves Harvest."
Some wind blown from here and there
dried the leaves that had covered us…
Some wind changed the green to paleness…
The mask that had covered us fell.
Some wind blown from here and there
distorted everything…
As if we had never wedged…nor ploughed
…nor were once sheltered.
Deceived by our effort, by our plans,
by the world that spun within us.
Now crushed by some wind.
Oh leaves why did you fail?
We cared for you, we tended you,
We called upon the village hills,
“come see the fashion of our leaves!”
And at the end of the day… you would cover us …
you would warm us…
and so life should have been.
And now we are left with our shame.…our shame.
At the end of the harvest we realized that…
Leaves in wind cannot,
Leaves in wind will not,
Leaves in wind were not
Shelter.
- Yvonne Boose is a current corps member for Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project. It's a national service program that places talented journalists in local newsrooms like WNIJ. You can learn more about Report for America at wnij.org.
