Catastrophe and calamity slip
through like fettuccine
but I close my eyes
to the unbearable pain of humanity
and picture myself on Te Henga’s tideline

A nurse asks if I need anything
even when she is rushed off her feet
I sip Chia Sisters ginger and turmeric juice
hoping beyond hope for world peace

I think the whole world is made of strips,
strips of good and evil
strips of story and strips of song

It’s a solid square of inedible fish pie
slathered in Thai coconut sauce that reminds me
of cotton wool and saltless sea foam

Living the moment is my way
of inhabiting the serene Lake of Good Thoughts

The nurse has come in on her holiday
to change my dressing and tell me
how well I am doing and how cold
it is outside

The night nurse tiptoes in
uses the night light from there to here
and it’s a sweet soft voice and it’s darling
and it’s floating on the water

It’s crescent eyes looking at the moon It’s stars
and patches of pitch-black dark

At dawn the air conditioning
is the sound of rain on a tin roof
and then water dripping in distant bush

Later it’s the ocean’s ebb and flow
collapsing in a single beat
sometimes an engine purring like a waterfall

The nurse sings
when she takes my blood
and changes my dressing
The clouds sing
when they sit outside
the window like favourite
albums from the 1970s

Living in the present tense
I bake a tiny poem
from the little words in
the little bucket I carry
in the little room in
my little bookshelf head

The nurse is tired
of working long hours
but they wipe my brow
and gently blow away my fever
down the corridor, down the lift
to an outside wind that whisks
heat and hurt far far away
to a Scottish loch

Paula Green
from The Venetian Blind Poems, The Cuba Press, 2025

Today I stand with nurses and doctors on strike, holding an enormous placard calling for better pay, increased staffing, better access to equipment and drugs available overseas. I am holding a copy of my new collection The Venetian Blind Poems because this book is dedicated to everyone on Mountains of Difficulty, including support crews. And that includes our incredible doctors and nurses, such as the ones that have guided me through a stem cell transplant and are currently going beyond the call of duty on my challenging recovery road. I look back on my time in Motutapu Ward and visiting the Day Stay Ward over the past three years, with extreme love. Why? I have loved this time because I have witnessed humanity at its very best, the extraordinary patience and kindness and skills of our health practitioners, no matter how overworked and unpaid and under-serviced they are.

We must continue to protest. We must continue to demand major investment in our breaking health system, choices that will significantly improve the wellbeing of nurses and doctors as well as patients and that will build better outcomes and more up-to-date treatments.

Honestly, I feel like crying, it feels so unfair our Government refuses to do its very best to make lives in Aotearoa matter.