My weekly downhill drive past your flat
And your static life in your static flat
Briefly synchronise courtesy of your mirror's angle,
Opening a brief view into your lonely life:
Your brown vintage sofa
With it's vintage orange cushions,
Your formica TV dinner table.
A retro combo,
Reminding me of the set of a 70s sitcom
Minus the laughs.
Yes, it's a terrible thing
That I can't help but gaze
At that speedy reflection
Of your Thursday nights
Above your anachronistic Everything shop;
The shop *** museum that you've curated
For forty years or more.

To say you are a Junior Doctor
Would be an understatement.
To say you are fit to practice
Would be irresponsible.
Your bedside manner
Leaves a lot to be desired.
You break your Hippocratic oath
At the drop of a hat.
You hand out prescriptions for Calpol
Like it's going out of fashion.
You tell me to take some pills
For the slighest of chills.
You take my temperature
And tell me I'm fine
When the reading says just 29.
When you check out my heart
You say it goes:
Ba-Boom Ba-Boom Ba-Boom Ba-Boom.
But I'll cut you some slack,
You may seem like a Quack,
But if I insist on a free medical
Then I shouldn't expect expertise
From a Doctor aged but 3.

You grow wild yet reverential
Your bowed white heads
Gathered in prayer groups
Dotting the well-kept lawn of the dead.

Do the residents tend to you?
Do their icy-white greenfingers
- reanimated by the winter moon -
Awaken you with a deathly touch?

River water flows
Quenches imagination
On scorched riverbank