Clicky

Samples (poem)

22 July 2025

Giles Dawnay is a writer, poet and GP in Herefordshire. His website is: www.gilesdawnay.com

 

The spit, the poo, the pee,
the blood, the sweat and the tears.
So many hopes, dreams, diagnoses,
uncertainty, metrics and fears.

The samples sit there waiting
in coloured livery on the side.
Once a hidden part of the patient
now separated and to be untied.

Picking through the various bins
is most of how we make our name.
The clues are in there somewhere,
get those gloves on, no shame!

Our patients leave the room
yet now some of them left behind.
To be taken elsewhere, a fraction
of body now extracted from mind.

Makes you begin to wonder
in the physical weave and wend.
Just where does the body begin,
and where on earth does it end?

 

Deputy editor’s note – see also these samples of Giles Dawnay’s poetry:

  1. https://bjgplife.com/fight-or-flight/
  2. https://bjgplife.com/post-heart-attack-review-poem/
  3. https://bjgplife.com/clocks/
  4. https://bjgplife.com/crabapples/
  5. https://bjgplife.com/the-nurses-stare-based-loosely-on-the-nurses-prayer/

Featured Photo by Testalize.me on Unsplash

BJGP Life

The BJGP is the world-leading primary care journal. At BJGP Life we add multi-media comment and opinion for the primary care community.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

0 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted

Latest from Arts

Reluctant Poets of the Bowel

Hypertension rarely announces itself ... And dignity ... I have learnt, Is the first casualty ... Of a viral gastroenteritis

Whilst I am here

Somewhere along this odyssey ... A rumour must have spread ... That doctors know a bit of everything ... From eyelashes to raising the dead

Teaching medicine with art: a show and tell

I have, at times and where appropriate, introduced different aspects of the humanities but find that art and poems provide, for the students, a short and often stimulating awareness of everyday life and illness.

For those whose primary is to care

As the quiet hum of computers wake before the sun, May you have the conviction that your work is never in vain... Eugenia Lee raises an ode to general practice

Threadbare

"There is silence for a moment as we consider how an area like this would not sustain even a single GP if it needed private subscribers, almost regardless of the level set for those costs ..."
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x