title: A Life Lived Backwards: Poems by an Emergency Medical Technician
author: Mark T Creaven
description: The place where Mark Creaven lives is called the Northeast Kingdom. It's a unique part of the world-- northeastern Vermont, almost to the Canadian border, the last bastion of the "real Vermont." To live in the Kingdom is to learn many survival skills. The life is hard. The winters are long. Cold creeps into your soul. A person winds up having many different jobs. Mark has been a teacher, a logger, a drug counselor, a photographer, an advertising rep. He's also been a husband, a father, a lover, and a poet. And through it all, he's carried a pager for his calling as an advanced level Emergency Medical Technician (AEMT). This book is written from the place where all of that comes together. It takes its title from the many miles he's spent riding backwards in an ambulance, watching the world recede through the back window. And, Mark says, because that's a metaphor for his life. Now retired, he lives alone with a cat who has no name.
zlib_text: 
  
  
  # TABLE OF CONTENTS
  
  
  
  
  
  good for you
  
  
  by
  
  
  tammara webber
  
  
    
  
  Good For You
  
  
  Copyright © 2011
  
  
  Tammara Webber
  
  
    
  
  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted,
  downloaded, distributed, stored in or introduced into any information storage
  and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or
  mechanical, without express permission of the author, except by a reviewer who
  may quote brief passages for review purposes.
  
  
  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or
  dead, or any events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and
  story lines are created from the author’s imagination or are used
  fictitiously.
  
  
    
    
  
  Cover Image Copyright Brandon Lyon, 2011
  
  
  BrandonLyonPhotography.com
  
  
    
  
  Dedicated to Tim
  
  
  I miss you every day
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  Chapter 1
  
  
    
  REID
  
  
  My thoughts upon becoming fully conscious: first, shit, I’m in the hospital
  again, and second, how bad is the damage to my one-week-o