Tiny Doctors

My wife came up with the term "tiny doctors," but I can't remember how or when. She may have been thinking of Elton John's song, "Tiny Dancer," and misspoke, but in any event, the term has been a source of humor in our family for quite a while. I took its silliness and ran with it into a poem, which turned out to be something of a Twilight Zone episode in short-poem form:

Tiny Doctors

Tiny doctors come down the street.
Their tiny white coats flare in sunshine.

Our neighborhood’s an ailment
they’ve come to diagnose.

Run away, we say to the tiny doctors,
this place cannot be cured.

They do not listen. They are tiny
determined doctors. They’ve brought

their training with them. They
surround our symptoms. We

lock them up in basements,
one by one. Tiny doctors, so

surprised, very captive. We treat
them well but keep them, poor

tiny doctors, poor miniature,
misplaced physicians.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom