BJZ Poems and Musings

This blog entry is a poem written during my third year of medical school, 1982-83. The context is that I was doing my Surgery rotation which included a good amount of time in the operating room, sometimes even assisting on cases. I was fascinated by anatomy from an early age and was finally getting to see “the insides” of a living person. In our first year Anatomy course we dissected the entire cadaver bodies of the generous donors but the tissues were not the same as a living body and by the end of the year were grey and desiccated. In the third year of medical school every rotation was an opportunity to envision oneself as a practitioner in that field – surgeon, internal medicine physician, obstetrician-gynecologist. The field I would end up in – emergency medicine – was in its infancy and there were no Board-certified emergency physicians in any of the hospitals where I trained. The daily assessment of each medical realm was influenced by the residents and attending physicians lauding the greatness of their fields.

Amidst this deep immersion in medical training medical students attempt to manage or squeeze in a personal life. In my case there was a college relationship that was challenged by distance and the long hours of medical school and was slowly dissolving. I’m not sure where the aggressive animal imagery in this poem came from – maybe the creative flashes from a tired, frustrated mind. Which leads me to ponder creativity. The influential book “Strength to Strength” by Arthur Brooks notes that for most of us, creativity peaks by the mid-30’s or so. Brooks refers to this ability to generate new ideas, approaches, and innovations as “fluid intelligence”. Later in life, we have “crystallized intelligence”, the broad perspectives that experience provides. What most of us call wisdom. At my current stage of life, I might not readily create a poem with this rambling cadence and disparate images. But it’s fun to go back and see what emerged from a younger mind at a key period of development.

A Somewhat Surgeon’s Sonnet

Is there conviction with deadened pain?
The more I wax, the more we wane.

The acute and chronic plight
Of passion poorly fueled;
Love, were I a lizard,
I’d zap you with my glue-like tongue
And pull you to my scaly arms.

Of late, and late, I have been prying,
Overtly snipping, cautiously tearing
Into others’ guarded fruits;
Sampling human nectar, if you may,
And I may, and damn,
The sweat beads up,
And my sterile hands twitch,
Twitch with excitement.

Blatant, unshared excitement,
A blade without a target;
But I am cutting toward the likeness
Of myself – I only know my phylum,
And to keep searching for you.
Love, were I an urchin,
I’d stick you tenderly.

I am soaring,
I see you like a hawk would see a mouse –
Far, too far away, goldenrod encircled prey.

It is laced with terror – the sound –
The lapping sound that innards make.
Cutting obliterates the whole,
But serves up good with pain.
I have severed all my thoughts
To skim mosquito ponds,
Swallow in the night.

The beasts they lumber through,
In pairs or two by two.
Love, were I a water buffalo,
I’d cry myself to sleep tonight,
To wake, a buffalo only,
And graze on you like weeds.

Brian J. Zink 1983 Copyright rules apply