[Max Goodman]

OTHER ROOMS

We’re gliding through a passageway, the souls
and I, from darkness into light, and then
a corridor. White walls. A gurney. Voices.
Here! Now! Delivery rooms! They thrill, and I
am charged, too, with their hope, though I don’t share it.
Too old, now, to be born, I pause and bob,
directionless, alone as they fly off,
uncertain whether there’s a place for me,
then drift away along the corridor
toward other rooms.

[Susan McLean]

Max, I find this poem puzzling. It seems to me that some of the souls are waiting to be born, but that the speaker may be dying, or at least in a kind of limbo, and doesn't know what destination his soul has, if any. I don't know what you are going for, but what I am picking up is mystery, a suspended animation.

Susan

[Hilary Biehl]

I don't know how important the thread title is, but even without that, the gurney and delivery rooms suggest a hospital. Hospitals are a place where people are born, go when they are sick, and die. I'm imagining N being whisked through hallways on a gurney, past the labor and delivery ward - except that the N is older and is headed elsewhere, to the part of the hospital where sick people go and perhaps die. (For some of us, that line between birth and death feels even thinner than this poem might suggest - childbirth is still associated with morbidity and mortality for both women and infants. That's probably not relevant here, though.)

The passageway at the beginning is interesting. I'm not sure how to interpret it. Is it simply a rite of passage that both N and the souls (of the babies about to born?) are undergoing? The babies are working their way into the light of this world. The N may be gliding only into the light of the white hospital ward, or maybe into some other less literal light. I suppose it's better that it's not entirely clear.

[Alex Pepple]

Hello, Max,

Your poem captures a liminal moment quite well. The movement from "darkness into light" suggests a transition from death (or near-death) toward hope and renewal, but the subsequent shift into the hospital corridor—with its white walls, gurney, and voices—grounds us in stark reality. This seems to describe a near-death experience, perhaps where monitors briefly flatlined before life resumed.

What's particularly striking is how the speaker travels with the souls initially, sharing their momentum, but becomes separated at the crucial moment. The line "Too old, now, to be born" resonates well—it's not merely about physical age but suggests someone who has lived too fully to start anew, creating a poignant explanation for why they cannot follow the souls to their rebirth.

The ending creates a good circular structure. "Drift away... toward other rooms" mirrors the opening's movement but stripped of the souls' excitement and destination. This reinforces the speaker's state of suspension—neither dying nor being reborn, but existing in a kind of eternal corridor. The poem works on multiple levels: the literal (a near-death experience in a hospital) and the metaphorical (the passageway between death and rebirth).

If there's room for development, it might be in exploring the emotional texture of this limbo state more fully—what does it mean to be "too old to be born" yet unable to complete the journey the other souls are making?

Strong work here, Max. The poem's restraint serves its subject well.

Cheers,
...Alex