In the airy atrium of Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital in Valhalla last Saturday, a couple sat in the front row of assembled chairs listening intently with other invited guests to poems being recited.

The poems were special, written by pediatric patients, youngsters living with pain, all too accustomed to the hospital’s monitors, pills and needles.

For the better part of an hour, the couple watched actors from Infinity Repertory Theatre Company in Bedford Hills performing “Notes from a Hospital Bed” — the collected thoughts of Maria Fareri’s Poetry Corner. The poets meet weekly whenever they are in the hospital for treatment, under the auspices of the facility’s Child Life and Creative Arts Therapy department.

There were poems about pain, about friends, about family and sunflowers.

Milan, age 12, wrote:
“Home is where I want to be
Safe warm and cozy
no more sticks and pokes
just me and my family.
Home is where I wanna be
Safe and sound with family.”

This is the second year for “Notes from a Hospital Bed,” which began as notes that checking-out patients left for those who would occupy their room, says Jeannie Sweeney, who moderates Poetry Corner.

Some of the young poets from last year’s corner are back this year.

Michelle Mohan, of the Bronx, comes to Fareri to deal with a neuromuscular disease of the mitochondrial cells, the body’s “power plant,” she explains.

She was there last weekend and saw two of her poems performed.

She wrote “What If I Climbed Up a Rainbow,” she says, when a friend died.

It closes with the lines:
“What if I climbed up a rainbow and I got to see my friend,
What if I climbed up a rainbow and I found out the top of the rainbow was really the end.”

Those words, she hopes, will follow others and find their way into her paintings, another passion for the 18-year-old that is fed by the creative arts therapy program. (She has designed holiday cards to benefit the hospital. See box.)

Some of the poems can get pretty heavy, as in a girl’s letter that starts “Dear Pain: I know you are here to do a job, but can’t you do it somewhere else?”

But then there are the Jane-isms, quirky thoughts from the mind of 14-year-old Jane Varghese of Queens.

If Poetry Corner had a Lily Tomlin, it’d be Varghese, who warns a visitor not to take her photo because “I’m hiding from the Canadian police.”

When Natalie Tiffany, who performed the Jane-isms, chats with her after the show, she tells Jane that she lives in North Salem.

“Cool,” Varghese says without missing a beat. “Any witches down there?”

Erin Nelligan, a Kennedy Catholic High School student, was artistic director for this year’s “Notes” program. That meant the Yorktown teen-ager had to divide the poems into categories — seasons, teen angst, sad and emotional feelings and holiday, happy ones — and choose an Infinity cast member to perform it. She also worked with director Paul Andrew Perez to help shape the piece.

A veteran of last year’s inaugural program, when Nelligan learned that Michelle and Jane — two of the group’s favorite poets — were coming to see the show, “I almost had tears in my eyes, I was so excited.”

Michelle “writes poems that are as good as ones I’ve read in textbooks,” Nelligan says.

“Notes from a Hospital Bed” will be performed again Oct. 18 at the Pulse Performing Arts Studio in Bedford Hills. Pulse is the home studio of Infinity Rep and its co-founder, Jennifer Dell, has donated the use of the space to the performance.

The event chair for the benefit, which will begin with a silent auction at 3 p.m., followed by the performance at 4, is Angela Uzzi.

It’s Uzzi’s job to coordinate the efforts of the hospital, Infinity Rep and Trish’s Ribbon, a Katonah-based nonprofit that raises funds on a local level and focuses on helping schools and hospitals. Trish’s Ribbon was founded by Uzzo’s brother, John Burton, and his wife, Trish.

The benefit performance will be longer and more elaborate than the hospital performance (which John Burton dubbed “the acoustic version”), with music and projections and dance added to heighten the theatricality of the piece.

Patient-poet Jannel wrote: “The scar represents what I am going through and the courage and strength that I have.”

That couple in the front row bear scars of their own. They are Brenda and John Fareri whose daughter, Maria, died 14 years ago to the day before last Saturday’s performance.

Maria, from Greenwich, Conn., was 13 when she contracted rabies from a bat bite.

The cramped Westchester Medical Center she was rushed to bears little resemblance to the children’s hospital that has become her legacy, a place where children can paint and write and be with families as they battle illness.

“The kids are just amazing,” Brenda Fareri said after watching “Notes from a Hospital Bed.”

“This kind of program is an expression of who Maria was, I think, and maybe, through these kids, who she continues to be: that caring and simpatico.”

Photo by Peter D. Kramer/The Journal News: Natalie Tiffany, 14, left, of North Salem with Jane Varghese, also 14, of Queens after a performance of “Notes from a Hospital Bed” at Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital in Valhalla. Natalie performed two of Jane’s funny musings—which the cast calls “Jane-isms”—at the event.

What: “Notes from a Hospital Bed”

When: 4 p.m. Oct. 18; silent auction and reception begins at 3 p.m.

Where: Pulse Performing Arts Studio, 238 Route 117 Bypass Road, Bedford Hills.

Tickets: $75

Call: 914-953-4306 or email angela@trishsribbon.org

Links: www.trishsribbon.org; www.infinityreptheatre.com; www.performthepulse.com; www.worldclassmedicine.com

How to help Donations to support the Child Life and Creative Arts Therapy department at Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital can be sent to: Tricia Hiller, Child Life Director, Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital at WMC Child Life Creative Arts Therapy, Department Room 3510, Valhalla, NY 10595. Or call 914-493-6657.

Holiday cards The Child Life and Creative Arts Therapy Department has created holiday cards, designed by pediatric patients. Check them out at www.worldclassmedicine.com/cards