Spoken Word Poetry Meets Medicine: Take A Breather

Author: Alex Koyfman, MD (@EMHighAK) // Edited by: Mike Weinstock, MD (@embouncebacks) and Brit Long, MD (@long_brit)

The ambulance bay – where the wind whistles, fog dissipates, and icicles melt

Keep an eye on the hard work we do

Deeply meaningful and needed

From 23 yards away, there is a physician suppressing emotion

Curiosity, triumph, doubt…  humility?

Who would want to walk in their shoes. From a distance, we see waves of wildflowers

Beautifully chaotic, flowing together, back and fore, bending with the passing breeze

But below, camouflaged, submerged, suppressed – hidden mines lie in wait

Are they content? It doesn’t matter, as the pain repressed…

but for rare times, when it smolders to the surface

Beaten family circling a loved one who has passed

An abusive father ferociously crying in the room where his child was coded

Penetrating trauma

A spiral of untreated psychiatric disease

Drug abuse/dependence – what separates us from our patients?

Still, we’ve got a lot left to accomplish

A return to the carefree times of past

Keep the child inside alive

So he can live to see another day