Florence takes a job
at the Institution for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen,
where she’s an excellent manager as well as nurse.
After England, France, and Turkey declare war
on Russia, her old friend Lord Herbert asks for help.
Florence buys and packs portable stoves, spare pairs
of sturdy shoes, a toolbox, and binoculars.
She buys white caps to keep her hair off her face
and dark dresses: none with hoops sewn in the hems
that would keep her from getting close
to those who need help.
She recruits thirty-eight more nurses, mostly
Protestant or Catholic nuns, to take a train to the shore
where ships bring soldiers shot on battlefields.
In November 1854, when she and the nurses arrive
at the hospital, a general says, Go home.
This is no place for ladies.
Florence doesn’t turn back. She makes plans
and meets newspaper writers who are shunned
by military officers who dislike
their grim reports about deaths and battles lost.
Late one afternoon, Florence finds her binoculars,
watches birds swoop over the Black Sea. The sky darkens.
She sees Venus, Mars, and a bright spot
that might be Saturn, once thought to mark
the farthest part of the universe, but that changed.