Getting to spend time with my beautiful doctor cousin today gave me so much respect for her profession. I mean...she saves lives on a daily. Pretty impressive stuff. So, in tribute to her and all of the doctors that rock it out everyday, check out this great Anne Sexton poem.
Doctors
BY Anne Sexton
They work with herbs
and penicillin
They work with gentleness
and the scalpel.
They dig out the cancer,
close an incision
and say a prayer
to the poverty of the skin.
They are not Gods
though they would like to be;
they are only a human
trying to fix up a human.
Many humans die.
They die like the tender,
palpitating berries
in November.
But all along the doctors remember:
First do no harm.
They would kiss if it would heal.
It would not heal.
If the doctors cure
then the sun sees it.
If the doctors kill
then the earth hides it.
The doctors should fear arrogance
more than cardiac arrest.
If they are too proud,
and some are,
then they leave home on horseback
but God returns them on foot.
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