My Little Patient

Oncology Times: 

25 November 2010 - Volume 32 - Issue 22 - p 38 

doi: 10.1097/01.COT.0000391442.94138.8f 

Poetry 

POETRY BY CANCER CAREGIVERS: “My little Patient” 

He sat rocking in the chair  

Wanting to purge the ill inside 

The ill that was, was so rare 

That no doctor-tools could subside 

His cherubic face fraught with concern 

His blue eyes wide with fear 

His gentle hands clasped in turn 

Waiting for the right words to hear 

A wisp of anger floated by 

Covered quickly by a resolute desire 

A cloaked cloud of inner fear 

Whelmed by the wanton fire 

Past care he was not 

Past cure he was 

Past love he was not 

Past anger he was 

So resolute in his desperation 

And frantic-mad in thought 

Random he was in conversation 

Held together by the fight he fought 

Many since have come and gone 

And many more will come and go 

Not any would look like him 

And not any would take a hold 

Memories linger as times pass 

Riddling the conscience with regret 

Oh how could he not be around 

When others who shouldn't, have 

The truth is vainly exposed 

For he grows more beautiful with time 

The little boy with a rare disease 

Holds the keys to our life's chime 

He lived when he lived 

Yet lives on after he died 

He touched whom he touched 

When life held him in stride

Now thrice his age so removed 

Yet twice the memories abound 

As twice the regret so grooved 

Brings thrice the desire and yearns 

He lives, though he died 

He died and so he lives 

Others live because he died 

He died so others can live 

Past care is never sought 

Past cure is sometimes found 

Past love is never thought 

When deep memories abound 

As Auden's falling torrent flows 

Shaking the assurance of any rose 

And Shakespeare's clock that tells the time 

Shows hideous night in violet's past prime 

With Cranch's rare rose's bloom foiled 

In death its matchless splendor spoiled 

Gives measure to the life's time 

Untrammeled lives, trampled never reaches prime 

My little patient lives, though he died 

A deep memory still so shocking 

That at times I wake up in the night 

And find him in the chair rocking.

PARVEZ DARA, MD, a hematologist/oncologist in Toms River, NJ, also has a blog, “The Arts, 

Sciences and Medicine: The Physician and the art of science and science of medicine,” at 

http://jedismedicine.blogspot.com 

© 2010 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Inc.