The week in verse: A Country Doctor
TRADITIONAL one-doctor country practices serving rural areas are in serious decline, says a report...
Gritty eyes or aching back
They toddled off to see the quack.
In Harris tweed he smoked a briar
Kept it in a wooden rack there above a log-look fire
And on a February day
Arrayed around his waiting room,
Fishtank and the magazines Scent of Vicks and Victory Vs
The restless children perched on knees
Ulcers, trouble down below
The quack was bound to know
A good old-fashioned country doctor
From a less neurotic age
His spatula, thermometer, manometer, a pressure gauge
There for 40 years or so
Hardly a soul he didn’t know
Having ushered into life
Farmer’s son to verger’s wife
And seen the venerable off:
With tumours, strokes, bronchitic cough
Long-retired, two decades back
They miss him still, they do, the quack.