The Poet and the Doctor

The doctor and the poet became friends late in life-- as old men they looked over the past in similar ways, wishing their youth had never ended, their work continued, their lives once again resplendent and filled with promise as the one healed the body and the other the soul.... But Time is always the master of Life till Death frees both, and so the doctor sent his patients away and the poet lost his words, the words he tried to heal with, words that sang and danced and played like carefree children.... The poet told his friend, the doctor, how he found his soul whilst in the blackest part of hell, utterly alone, in pain far beyond any pain the doctor ever treated, a soul he had forgotten and found when he threw his life away. The doctor listened to his friend, the poet, but could not, or perhaps just would not believe-- he just could not see existence beyond mortality, nor purpose beyond chance. The doctor was so wise as to be foolish, thought the poet, and I, so foolish as to be wise? he wondered to himself...