The week just gone marked 15 years in medicine. Two of those years were spent in New Zealand, the rest in England, and the last 10 in general (family) practice. It also marked the end of my clinical career—I'm hanging up the stethoscope and starting down a new path. I don't yet know where that path begins, let alone where it leads. But it's something I have to do.
Continue reading 'Hanging up the stethoscope'
Tag archive for 'poetry'
This is a short and rather cryptic piece about devotion to duty and the introspective self-doubting thoughts it sometimes brings, and the anticipated healing power of friends. It isn't dated, but I'm guessing that I wrote it during my rather traumatic internship as a House Surgeon in Whangarei. Nowadays I don't usually resort to poetry when I can't sleep, but my sleep is still periodically disturbed by the same negative thinking—thinking that can resist even the wise words of a very good friend.
I don't know who wrote this, but they are fine words. Can you identify the author so I can properly attribute them?
Continue reading 'Excerpt from Buddhist literature'
Akka Mahadevi was an Indian poet living in the 1100s. Although here she is writing about non-devotees, there is also a message about the uniqueness and strength of perception derived from experience. If you haven't done it, you haven't lived it. If you weren't there, you didn't really experience it. Value the diversity in perspective that others bring to a situation...
Continue reading 'Experience is unique'
I was at high school in the mid-80's when I wrote this short poem reflecting a level of anxiety about the threat of nuclear war...
Continue reading 'Papa and His children'
During the summer of 1992 I was in my last year at medical school, studying for Finals—the exams to end all exams (well, for a couple of years anyway). My diary recollects an attempt to escape the physical bonds of chair and desk through poetry...
Continue reading 'Summer of study'
