The Poet and the Doctor
The doctor and the poet became friends late in life--
as old men they looked over the past in similar ways,
wishing their youth had never ended, their work continued,
their lives once again resplendent and filled with promise
as the one healed the body and the other the soul....
But Time is always the master of Life till Death frees both,
and so the doctor sent his patients away and the poet
lost his words, the words he tried to heal with, words
that sang and danced and played like carefree children....
The poet told his friend, the doctor, how he found his soul
whilst in the blackest part of hell, utterly alone, in pain
far beyond any pain the doctor ever treated, a soul
he had forgotten and found when he threw his life away.
The doctor listened to his friend, the poet, but could not,
or perhaps just would not believe-- he just could not see
existence beyond mortality, nor purpose beyond chance.
The doctor was so wise as to be foolish, thought the poet,
and I, so foolish as to be wise? he wondered to himself...
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