Reviewed by Cheryl Ann Passanisi
In the Shadows of Service
by Cynthia Hamilton Urquhart
BlazeVOX
December 2025, 70 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1609645328
In the first three poems you are boldly thrown into the world of service and bear witness to the unspeakable tragedies and searing dramas that are right around the corner, happening right now in your community. For 25 years Urquhart was a police officer in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and in this chapbook she shares some of the experiences of life and death that first responders are routinely exposed to through their work every day. Her motivation for service is to “help”, to be the one to intervene and create safety or peace or solve a problem. She is devastated when the circumstances are beyond her resources.
In close succession she writes of a girl losing her father, a father losing his daughter, and a majestic animal hit by a truck.
In the first poem, “The Call Came In”, she responds to a call of a farm accident involving a farmer, a truck, a friend, a beer and a missed turn. The farmer “a strong built man” is found by the his 12 year old daughter who tries to revive him and calls for help:
The dispatcher said
the news is bada child
screamed
she’s
lost her dad
she’s
just twelve years old
says
his skin is growing cold
Urquhart, the police officer arrives on the scene and knows it is hopeless but starts CPR: “I have no manual or training scenario, that prepares/me for the sounds of a heartbroken child”. She muses on the things the farmer/father will miss: cheering his daughter’s team from the bleachers, teaching her to drive, walking her down the aisle… These lost moments that will not transpire, make the hopes and aspirations of this farmer poignantly real while the young girl’s world collapses with the loss of a central figure in her life.
The scene is drawn with such care to share a real time unfolding using very short lines, columns and lines that spread across the page at irregular intervals, and use of italics for changes in viewpoint. The words: “I try” repeated and scattered across the page give a sense of the futility.
her world
is gone
that’s all it takesI
walk
to herI
holdher tight
She tries to comfort the girl, does not give into her own grief and tears, and is soon off to another emergency, a shooting. She doesn’t have time to process the experience before she is pulled away to another harrowing scene.
The next poem, “You Would Think That I Would Know”, is about a father and grandfather witnessing the death of a 5-year-old child:
Her big brown eyes
they stare at me
opened wide
they could not seeshe lay
upon the cold, hard floor
her heart
had stopped
it beat no more
Her dad and “Grampy” on their knees screaming, pleading:
help her, help her please
make her breathe, make her smile
wake her up for just a while…
The scene is gut wrenching:
her eyelashes sit still…
there is no gentle flutter
dancing with the joy of life
Again she knows it is too late but begins CPR:
the hurt, the pain, the hopelessness
each breath I took for her
now lingers in my chest
heavy and unrelenting
a shadow that will follow me
it’s etched into my soul
When the paramedics arrive, there is a little relief with a shared burden. They apply their skills and try to revive the girl. They look at each other and know it is futile but they did their job and took the child to the hospital. Urquhart was there when the mother arrived to the scene of the unthinkable: her child whisked away to the hospital. The mother and father embrace, fall to the floor and cry. They ask Urquhart to take them to the hospital. She describes the ride to the hospital: “the drive was heavy/the drive was far//the words were few”.
Urquhart allows the stories to unfold, tell themselves with few scattered phrases across the page.
This technique allows the reader to inhabit the scene. Suspense and pathos are constructed line by line, slowly building as the reader begins to grasp the enormity of the scene’s significance, the weight of these life altering moments.
The sing-song rhythm, nursery rhyme cadence and repeating rhymes create a container to allow the reader to approach the radioactive tragedies.
“The Young Bull Moose” is a poem about arriving at a scene where a truck has hit and broken the back of a moose. It is an equally shattering event. The moose is still alive, cold, frightened and can’t move. Urquhart locks eyes with the moose and tries to put herself in his place and determine what he is thinking. She observes:
Your beautiful body
so sleek and so black
your muzzle
your hooves
the hunch of your back…
She tries to reconstruct the scene before the Young Moose was struck: he was just crossing the road trying to reunite with the rest of his family. It was an ordinary night: the beauty and majesty of the moose incapacitated and helpless lying on cold pavement. Silently she feels the moose looking at her and repeating the oft repeated expectation as if she were a higher power:
police lady
help me
help me get up
I can’t seem to move
my legs they are stuck…
She takes on the perspective of the moose, his puzzlement at the scene, his grasping for an explanation up until a man approaches with a gun and points the thing at the moose making a loud noise. Even in death the moose keeps commenting:
If only
the others
around her could see
the grief
that she carries
from nights such as these
I wish
I could tell her
that I am alright
to let go
of the memory
from that dark awful night…
Of course, after repeated nights bearing witness to life-altering tragedies involving the young, the old and majestic animals, not being able to show emotions, and the burden of trying to make a difference in the face of overpower circumstances: it all comes crushing down and takes its toll. She becomes despondent and is diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD.
The next few poems document how she found help, went to a counselor, group therapy and began to build a community of first responders finding mutual support. She was able to bear witness to her own grief and that of others in her position. She eventually retires after 25 years of service and creates an organization to help others with PTSD.
Being a healthcare worker, I can relate to so much of the sadness that builds up in the office of “bearing witness”, trying to be a positive force for good in the world, and the dread of disillusionment when you fall short. “Bearing witness” is a powerful act and Urquhart gives us a peek behind the façade of “policeman” to the toll individuals pay by being there, being present, helping, when its possible, making a difference. But when it’s not possible, the only thing left is to open the heart, let in the hurt and acknowledge the tremendous weight we all bear in roaming this planet with fellow creatures.
The Young Bull Moose, the doll-like 5-year-old with big brown eyes, the father in the prime of life, healthy and strong: all of these can be us, all are someone we know, all vulnerable yet courageous and strong and deserving of someone to bear witness to the beautiful, brief flare that was the life they shared with us on our common journey on this planet.
It prompts me to remember and invoke the oft repeated ending to Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day”, never more appropriate:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
About the reviewer: Cheryl Ann Passanisi was born and raised on the central coast of California and went to school at California State University, Long Beach, and University of California, San Francisco where she earned a master’s degree in Nursing. She lives on the San Francisco peninsula and works at a teaching hospital as a nurse practitioner. She is active in local community theater and opera chorus.