The poem leads

The door swung hard shut

and with the day a blank sheet

I let my feet take me just

where, which was up at first

to climb above the cold shade

finding snaking Salamanca

infused with fumes of buses

and bustles of students

so I left the road and strode

across campus, feigning familiarity

with this strange university

then through to Kelburn

and the Upland Road.

Striding easy, I planned

to return via Aro Valley

but instead surrendered

to the pull of the bush gully

down my right, quiet but

for an unseen stream

and the sweet creaks and gongs

of an unhinged tūī.

Following damp gravel tracks

around the contours of deep shade

I lost the arc in my mind

and suddenly stumbling into light

was perplexed to find

where the wilful poem had led.

Poetry and Medicine XIII: Author unknown

Metaphors for Resilience

I learnt this short poem at school, and although I can still recite it from memory, I have no idea of its title or who wrote it. If anyone can tell me more about it, I would be delighted to know, as the poem has occupied a nook in my mind all my life, contributing to my early appreciation of poetry and my concept of resilience.

I see it as a statement of defiance in the face of forces which wear down, demoralise and destroy.

O do not let the restless sea

The rub and scrub of the wave,

Scour me out and cover me

With sand in a shallow grave.

But may my image like a rock

Scornful of the tide’s attack,

Shift no inch at the green shock

And glisten as the wave springs back.

The even line length, regular rhythm and predictable rhyme pattern make this type of poem, like the lyrics of a song, easier to remember.

Read it aloud, and note the even flow of alternating stressed and unstressed syllables. Yet in the second-to-last line this rhythm is suddenly disrupted, as though something has struck. Reading aloud also helps the reader to appreciate the repetition of sounds – the hissing of ‘s’s at the end of the first line suggesting the sound of waves, the rhyming within a line of ‘rub’ and ‘scrub,’ the repeated ‘m’s in the fifth line and the ‘sh’ sounds in the seventh line.

The words ‘let’ and ‘may’ in the first lines of each stanza are very similar in meaning, but using ‘let’ sounds better alongside ‘restless,’ whereas ‘may’ in the second stanza is phonetically more compatible with ‘my image’ which follows. When a poet selects words which sound as though they belong together, the result is more musical and aesthetically pleasing, like colours that blend well together in a painting.

The main strength in this poem lies in the metaphors. The scouring effect of a restless sea can be seen as a metaphor for anything that steadily grinds us down, such as the constant burden of endless patient need, and working in a health system badly in need of reform. When we talk of burnout in our workforce, we are using a different metaphor, or figure of speech, for the same thing. Becoming slowly buried in sand, and the image of a shallow grave, convey a sense of being terminally overwhelmed.

But the second stanza is far more positive. The narrator is drawn to the image or metaphor of a rock, standing unmoved as the force of each wave’s assault is absorbed, confidently glistening as it springs back.

Into mask territory

This is mask territory, take care.

Finding myself on the other side now

I lift one from the box and wear it,

my patient face muffled in stuffy fabric.

Your full name and date of birth, please

is confirmed with several heads

seated behind plastic screens

at a succession of counters,

then I take the clipboard of questions

that want numbers rather than stories

– tick the boxes, vote for yes or no –

to wait among the subdued and patient.

The ticky-click of crutches passes,

then a lumbering moonboot,

an old hunch pushing a frame

but for most, the need is less scrutable

as we’re channelled along an assembly line –

through the cold efficiency of x-ray

next a focused surgeon’s assessment

blood tests with a tech from Macedonia

and a shy student nurse taking measurements

then upstairs to strip for an ECG

where an angel hovers over my pale

chest with her little sticky post-it tabs.

Fully processed, I emerge from the overheated

clinic to reward myself with coffee,

having secured a spot on a waiting list

in an ever hopeful elastic queue.