Summer 2026: Looking for (My) Life ~~ Page 1, Poems

In Search of Life 

With giant telescopes and deep space probes,

We scan far galaxies for signs of life –

No doubt a worthy venture, especially if

We have secretly written off the earth as doomed.

I find life in towering sequoias,

In bluestem flowers and tiny buttercup;

In hearty bristlecone pine and scruffy oak,

In crusty lichens on wintered bark;

I find life in an old folks’ home nurse’s aide,

Who hugs her lonely patient after giving bedtime pills;

In a schoolteacher who does not give up

On a student of scorned skin color or accent.

I do not impugn doctors’ vital signs – heart rate,

Blood pressure, and oxygen level;

But I send my own probes way deep inside,

To tell me whether I am really alive.

Poet’s Notes: When I first learned the theme for this issue, “Looking for (My) Life,” the seeds of two possible poems almost immediately began to germinate, this one, and “Sameday,” also included in this issue. My search for life in this poem contrasted with that of missile-launched satellites and deep space probes, beginning in the 1950’s, and culminating in the James Webb Space Telescope that has ventured billions of miles from earth.  For me, nearly from the outset of the “space age,” the technological venture interwove genuine scientific curiosity with a growing dread that, as we humans destroy the earth, it might be uninhabitable. With it came the often-magical obsession with finding planetary systems elsewhere in the universe – maybe some of which might become our future home after we have spoiled ours.

This poem searched here on earth for signs of life – and not mere biological presence, but aliveness, vitality. I began with my tenaciously beloved Nature, and ended by sending spiritual as well as biological probes into my (and our) inner spaces, including the human unconscious in all its dimensions. I had, and continue to have, an urgency to know whether aliveness dwells within – or whether I merely exist, counting the ticks on my biological clock. For the sake of my very life, I need(ed) to know.

*****

Sameday 

Seven days of the week, at least

As enumerated in English:

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,

Thursday, Friday, Saturday –

Some days even called

By their significance:

“Another Monday,” known for expectation

Of the usual tedium of return to work

After a supposedly relaxing week-end;

“Hump Day,” Wednesday, mid-point

On the steep climb of toil, then

“Downhill from there,” toward weekend

Recovery and restoration, a yearning

All summed up in TGIF – “Thank goodness it’s Friday,”

Gratitude for fulfilment of hope

And anticipation, release,

Relief from the workaday world;

Regeneration and preparation for

The next cycle of unwelcome work.

In old folks’ homes and nursing homes,

Nomenclature is more felt than said:

The senses confer what lips

May not be able or allowed to utter.

All seven are Samedays, despite crowded

Monthly schedules of diverse activities:

Bingo, exercise, movies, balloon volleyball,

Dominos, worship, puzzles, occasional outside performers,

The weekly cycle of meals, seasonal and holiday

Decorations and celebrations – busy, though

As routine as a metronome.

Everyone and everything part

Of the wheels and gears

Of a ticking clock.

Ouroboros, that mythical snake

Who coils and bites its tail,

Depicts the renewal of yet

Another cycle of endless repetition –

Ouroboros knows Sameday well,

Is condemned to a life

Of eternal monotony.

Anywhere could be anywhere else;

Anytime could be any other time.

For people who are able,

An occasional outing to a supermarket

Or shopping center, offers a brief

Burst of sunshine in the overcast

Atmosphere of Sameday and Sameplace.

Otherwise, except for occasional

Power outages from storms,

And water pipe bursts,

Mostly television offers evidence that

A world beyond Sameday exists.

“Sundown syndrome,” a leaden clinical term

For confusion and fear set off by light deprivation,

Often at the end of the day, hardly

Begins to paint the vast canvas

Of the many shades of darkness and shadow

That haunt Sameday. Daylight or nighttime,

Fluorescent or incandescent,

Make little difference to

The oppressive deprivation

Of eye and spirit

That Samedays incur.

Poet’s Notes: This poem is the offspring of my urgent, even desperate, search for a sense of aliveness as I dwell – now for 3 ½ years – in a medical residential facility called “assisted living.” Millions of mostly elderly people reside in various institutions of assisted living, nursing homes, skilled nursing homes, and others, that are well known for their attempt at mechanical assembly line efficiency and which in the process become soul-deadening to their residents or patients.

In this poem, I try to bear witness to and evoke the lived experience of pervasive ritualized routines, subtly and strictly enforced sameness. A social, medical steamroller crushes curiosity, individuality, creativity, even a glimmer of vibrant aliveness even in the midst of decline and sickness. If the inhabitants of these old folks’ home facilities are far from the condition of barely walking-dead Muselmann of Nazi concentration camps, resigned to their fates, they (we) are nonetheless zombified, hollowed-out vessels of the emotionally alive humans they still could be – with all their limitations and conditions. We are no longer a who, but only a what – object.

Even the flurry of organized social activities and meals in these facilities rests on cycles of repetition, sameness, which gradually wear down personal distinctiveness. The great sociologist Erving Goffman called facilities such as these “total institutions,” and psychiatrist Murray Bowen described the process of “de-selfing” in pathological families.

The title of my poem emerges from this soul-killing uniformity. I called it by a neologism (I think), “Sameday,” that is, the erasure of differently named days of the week, each with a distinct identity, and their replacement with the same name for each day of the week, indistinguishable from the other. Many fellow residents where I live call their apartments “boxes” or “cells.” Likewise, many residents have said to me in a resigned tone that that are here “putting in time, waiting to die.”

This is not the atmosphere portrayed in the glossy brochures, videos, and tours of prospective residents and their families. But the erosion of distinctiveness to sameness and deadness is relentless and unforgiving.  My poem attempts to portray this world.

About the Poet: Howard F. Stein is an applied, psychoanalytic, medical, and organizational anthropologist; psychohistorian; organizational consultant; and poet. He taught for nearly 35 years in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, OK, US. He is author, co-author, or editor of 35 books, 11 of which are books or chapbooks of poetry. His most recent poetry book is Standing in the Chaos (2024). He has published over 300 poems. He was Frequent Contributor to Songs of Eretz Poetry Review. He is Poet Laureate of the High Plains Society for Applied Anthropology, and Psychohistory Poet Laureate. He can be reached at hfs.dad@gmail.com