When Mum Describes a Horse
When mum describes a horse
She has seen from her low bed
Galloping across the white wall
Or through it
We cough and fetch another
Glass of water. Slip back
Resume the wait and look past
The ward to where
The prints of hooves
On the muddy path
Tracking the edge of the car park
Are heading home.
Riderless, walnut-brown
We see it
Race to the lip of the hill
And turn a final time.
About this poem
This poem is one of the editors’ highlighted selection of poems from an open call for readers’ proposals from the second edition of Tools of the Trade: Poems for new doctors.
David is a former mental health service user who has worked in the field of patient and public engagement for 25 years. He is Patient Director for the Sussex MSK Partnership (Central), the first role of its kind in the NHS. His poems have appeared in, among others, The Rialto, Magma, Smiths Knoll and some anthologies. His pamphlet Liberian Pygmy Hippopotamus was published by Templar.
