Finding inspiration in other poems

[alee_grrl]

When I was a freshman in college we read The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock. Around the same time my great aunt was in the hospital. As I was walking in to visit her one afternoon I had a startling realization. Prufrock had measured his life in coffee spoons, but I had measured mine in hospital rooms. My brother was a severe asthmatic so we had many a late night emergency room visit and both my maternal grandparents had chronic health issues that often meant long hospital stays. It was an interesting realization and a fun way to relate to poetry read. It would be two years before this realization would turn into a poem of its own. My junior year I took a creative writing course and our final assignment was to write either a sonnet or a villanelle, paying careful attention to both meter and rhyme. I hesitated on a topic for this poem until I remembered the old connection I had made between Prufrock and hospital rooms. With a little tweaking I had a perfect ending couplet for a sonnet. Then I just had to go back and fill in the beginning. :) Here is the resulting work:

Measurability

Light gray walls, strewn with paintings gone unseen
encircle me. I walk through sliding doors.
Shoes squeak down silent halls, an old routine
recalled. The scent of lemon-fresh bleach bores
through nostrils covering the cloying scent
of death. I round the corner, past machines
with snacks. My stomach roils in discontent
as I recall how often I have seen
halls like these. Past the nurses station two
doors down I find room three-thirteen. I stand
a moment, letting thoughts still and subdue
themselves. One thought breaks off and then expands.
While Prufrock gauged his life with coffee spoons
I've measured mine in hopsitals' bland rooms.