BJZ Poems and Musings

As a second year medical student I was immersed in the scientific learning required to become a physician. But, I was also conscious of how the scientific method, the myriad of facts and the new language of medicine was crowding out my creative side. I wrote this poem in 1982, partly as a protest against the consuming nature of medicine and as a reflection on why we pursue it as a career. I do regret referring to my medical school faculty instructors as “strange, absorbed freaks”. And I did learn that we can understand disease from statistics. The naive contrarian just needed to vent at that time.

Sparrows

I am almost in my adventitial
frame of mind completely,
now that all this time is spent
in trying to make disease repent –
disease is free and does what it likes,
and statistically speaking, it doesn’t;
only the strange absorbed freaks speak
to my ears with more membranes than one.

there was a whole mess of sparrows
that congregated in our barn from the snow;
when the wind died down they’d flit out
in the drifts to eat the snow-bent, left over
oats and wheat – except one which hung back,
puffed out, sick, with dull eyes and cow shit
on his beak – I fussed over that one for three days
until he died, which my uncle had said he would
from the start, and why didn’t I go watch
the whole flock out there seed-pickin’ in the snow
if I was so interested in them, anyway?

Brian J. Zink 1982 Copyright rules apply