‘In The Green
I look around, I see worn out faces,
Eyes that tell of deep, dark places,
Places we've been, things we've seen,
Things we've done, while in the green.
We deal with other people's pain,
No time to rest, no time to train,
No time to eat, no time for breaks,
And god forbid we make mistakes.
No time to pause, no time to tarry,
To think about the load we carry,
The responsibility that we shoulder,
Weighs us down, like a boulder.
Like a sponge, we absorb it all,
It gets so heavy, sometimes we fall,
It's something we don't talk about,
It's time we let the secret out.
What would the general public think,
About the way we cry, the way we drink,
The way we wake up in the night,
Dripping with sweat, shaking with fright
Yet each day we put on the green,
To take our place within the team,
To take our place within the crew,
This is who we are, this is what we do.
We join our friends in the thin green line,
Getting thinner and thinner all the time,
As broken colleagues walk away,
To get a job with better pay.
We don't have hearts of stone,
And after work we go on home,
To our normal daily life,
With all the normal daily strife.
So to all my friends in the green,
It's time that we all came clean,
It's time that we stopped to ask,
What's going on behind the mask.
Don't fret my friends, for there is hope,
We've found a way that we can cope,
I'll tell you what we have found,
We can share the load around.
If we stop trying to hide,
The things that go on inside,
If we can talk about the way we feel,
We can make it no big deal.
We can start to help each other,
Because my friend, you are my brother, And you're my sister, in the green,
And on each other, we can lean.
In solidarity and fellowship’
Jamie Clift
Paramedic
NWAS
