Pants
Amy Nichol
Poetry
Feels like
I’ve seen
More underwear
Than a Marks and Spencer Bra fitter
Teenage girls in matching sets in candy colours
Asking for the morning- after pill.
Mature gentlemen in white cotton-y -fronts and vests
To keep the chill off their dicky hearts.
White haired ladies with flower names
Held up and in by greying cream scaffolding.
I’ve seen
More underwear
Than a Marks and Spencer Bra fitter
Teenage girls in matching sets in candy colours
Asking for the morning- after pill.
Mature gentlemen in white cotton-y -fronts and vests
To keep the chill off their dicky hearts.
White haired ladies with flower names
Held up and in by greying cream scaffolding.
The strange privileges of medicine.
You analyse the murmur that they may never hear
But might kill them.
You look into a hundred ears
But will never see your own.
You ask about itching down there, and discharge
And look inside the most surreal of places
With big, metal levers.
You stand in a magnolia room
And the family thank you with red rubbed eyes
For sedating their father so he can die in peace
And you don’t know what to do or think or say,
His face imprinted in your hippocampus
(Let’s keep it medical not emotional)
Until
You fill it up with people’s pants
And systolic over diastolic
And writing labels on bottles of blood
And get on with the job
Of strange privileges.
Whole Person Care – Year One
There is a deep sense of realism that permeates throughout this poem. The author focuses on the intimate parts of people’s lives; the strange, private and uncomfortable moments that few would ever see. They break medicine down, but not into technical terms and fancy wording, but into snapshots of compassion amidst the chaos.
The final line of the poem seems to summarise the experiences of a doctor, a life of strange privileges. The privilege to help. The privilege to comfort. The privilege to see, and touch and hear the moments that could change a person’s course for better or for worse. A life full of intimate chaos wrapped in a veneer of calm. That is the privilege we have.