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Medicine and Meaning
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  • Issues
    • Issue One: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Images
      • Non-fiction
      • Poetry
      • Fiction
      • Conversations @ UAMS
    • Issue Two: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue Two – Conversations
      • Issue Two – Fiction
      • Issue Two – Images
      • Issue Two – Non-fiction
      • Issue Two – Poetry
    • Issue Three: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue Three – Conversations
      • Issue Three – Fiction
      • Issue Three – Images
      • Issue Three – Non-fiction
      • Issue Three – Poetry
    • Issue Four: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 4 – 55 Words
      • Issue 4 – Conversations at UAMS
      • Issue 4 – Fiction
      • Issue 4 – Images
      • Issue 4 – Non-Fiction
      • Issue 4 – Poetry
    • Issue Five: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 5 – Poetry
      • Issue 5 – 55-Word Stories
      • Issue 5 – Conversations @ UAMS
      • Issue 5 – Fiction
      • Issue 5 – Images
      • Issue 5 – Non-Fiction
    • Mehta Awards 2022
    • Issue 6: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 6 – Non-Fiction
      • Issue 6 – 55-Word Stories
      • Issue 6 – Conversations @ UAMS
      • Issue 6 – Fiction
      • Issue 6 – Images
      • Issue 6 – Poetry
    • Issue 7 – Winter/Spring 2023
      • Issue 7 – 55-Word Stories
      • Issue 7 – Conversations at UAMS
      • Issue 7 – Fiction
      • Issue 7 – History of Medicine
      • Issue 7 – Images
      • Issue 7 – Non-Fiction
      • Issue 7 – Poetry
  • Fiction
  • Non-fiction
  • Poetry
  • Conversations
  • Images
  • 55-Word Stories
  • History of Medicine

Poetry

Change

When I am old, I want to look back
And feel like my life really mattered.
But for now. I’m young and confused
Often getting bruised and battered.

From where I started it still is surprising
That I am where I am.
Perspective is gained when I pause
And look back to where I began

From humble beginnings I come
Once a kid full of rage
But I’ve learned to live is to love
And slowly I’ve started to change.

I’m not where I want to be yet
But I have faith that someday I might be,
The road is long. but I’ve grown strong
To beat the darkness I’m fighting

I think I’ve become someone different
And it makes me feel pride
To know I can change
I feel like I’m hitting my stride

I finally feel I belong
But part of me still feels uncertain
I try and resist the doubt
That soon they’ll be closing the curtain

I try to stay true and try to stay focused
I can’t help but fear I might fall.
Had clarity in very brief moments
But sometimes it’s hard to recall.

Sometimes it thunders and rains,
I feel like I’m falling apart,
But the storm always breaks before I do
And it feels like I get a fresh start

Like I’m on a boat out on the ocean
The skies are sunny and blue
The gentle breeze puts me in motion
The journey, exciting and new

I float away, not sure where I’m going
I wonder when I’ll get there too
But overwhelming the fear of drowning
Is the high of enjoying the view

Nick Wary is a medical student at UAMS.

Filed Under: all, Poetry

Epic Haikus

Epic, open, please!
Numerous charts to complete.
Will you ever load?


Physician builders,
Trained to improve Epic work.
We need more of you.

Alvin F. Stewart, M.D., is the Epic Anesthesia Operational Lead and Epic Physician Builder. He is also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at UAMS.

Filed Under: all, Poetry

I, Atlas

Beautiful life so often forsaken
Let sounds of the night gently awaken
The burning desire to live

Caught up in the rhythm with no rhyme or reason
I keep running in place with each passing season
To proceed I first must forgive

Forgive myself for not reaching the unattainable
Forgive the world for being so unchangeable
And I must let myself just be

Be merely human. Be free

Tyler Estes is a third-year M.D./M.P.H. student at UAMS.

Filed Under: all, Poetry

A Mother

A mother in the NICU
waiting room thinks aloud,
If God were listening
If God were
If God
If
And looks to where clear sky and ground meet,
and tries not to contemplate the gravity of anything
on the other side of the window.

Christopher Fettes is a Program Coordinator and Instructor in Environmental and Occupational Health in the UAMS College of Public Health.

Filed Under: all, Poetry

Musings

I do not understand love, as mightily as I strive, it is at once real and tangible, yet dimensionless, for like space and time can not be measured, nor truly comprehended, it can only be known.

We talk of showing our love yet it is invisible, and cannot be seen, we demonstrate our love through our acts, but they can not be described,
it may be offered but can not be owned,
love can only be felt.

Love is not shared, it is freely given, it is not a barter to be traded, nor bargained
it does not cause joy or gladness, nor pain nor sorrow,
love is joy, sorrow its absence, love is love,
nothing more.

We search our lives for love, but it is not found, for it lies not without but within us,
for it is self, the most difficult of all things to know, ourselves,
given freely, love asks for nothing,
but to be accepted.

I do not understand love as mightily as I strive,
it stretches our emotional fibers past their limits,
it takes joy beyond pains threshold, then pain to joy, it is wondrous,
tho never understood.

Mark Weatherton is an Emeritus Professor in the UAMS College of Health Professions.

Filed Under: all, Poetry

River

Year after year flowing through halls
A healing river of humanity
Quickly it comes
So soon it goes
Carrying with it all it knows
Out to the state and world
It flows and flows
A warm stream
Healing for the suffering

Laura Stanley is an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Developmental Sciences.

Filed Under: all, Poetry

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Phone: (501) 686-7000
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