Time

Daniel McNeela School of Medicine and Public Health, Department of Biostatistics & Medical Informatics 2014 Poem   Existence is meant to burn in structured candescence, the lighting of a candle, hot melting of wax. This extolled by man who thought, in all his vainglory, to make structured time by casting it in the accruable tick—…

An Ode to Francis Collins

Chris Unterberger School of Pharmacy 2021 Poem   Longtime NIH director, Francis Collins, announced his resignation of the post last week. For the past twelve years, Dr. Collins has served as the head of the most important health institution in the nation while guiding the country’s scientific research under three presidents. Before becoming director of…

Lung Song

Dana Maya School of Medicine and Public Health, Department of Surgery 2021 Poem   1. You saw it too: a man strangled, his last breath taken. That summer the sickness that stole breaths came, the streets were in flames, our lungs filled with shouts that felt like fire, the forests filled with smoke that summer,…

Voiceless

Nithin Charlly School of Medicine and Public Health 2021 Poem   Coughing through the night As if he were a dog barking  Lips pursed, clubbed nails, cachexic  His pack of cigarettes lit nearby  Providing just enough warmth  From the cool evening  To make this nightly routine worth it  I asked them Is Uncle Rohan okay?…

Pajama time/Pandemic time

Liana Eskola, DO School of Medicine and Public Health 2021 Poem   Rita Charon, the godmother of narrative medicine, knows words and patients.   She knows doctors too–what we give, what we lose, what we need. How we cry. How we hush our own beating hearts.   She knows about pajama time, and all the…

Seek

Nasia Safdar, MD, PhD School of Medicine and Public Health, Department of Medicine 2020 Poem   There is in each of us, a yearning For respect Earn it you say? To the mother To the homemaker To the invisible overtime worker A throw-away remark Or perhaps a carefully thought out remark Shreds Right down to…

Restless

Toby Campbell, MD, MSCI School of Medicine and Public Health 2020 Poem   Living, like I am, Where nothing is simple and nothing is normal. Dying, like I am, In slow motion. Here, in death’s shadow, every minute matters. The mundane and the vital feel too much the same: A bath and a podcast and a…