Poem for a Hospital Wall - by
Love has been loitering
/ down this corridor
/ has been seen
/ chatting up out-patients
/ spinning the wheels of wheelchairs
/ fluttering the pulse of the night nurse
/ appearing,…
hospitals
This Is Bad Enough - by
This is bad enough
/ So please …
/
/ Don’t give me
/ gobbledegook.
/
/ Don’t give me
/ pages and dense pages
/ and
/ “this leaflet aims to explain ……
Ward 64 - by
the curtain’s beige and orange checks
/ do nothing to divide us
/
/ when her drip beeps I think it’s mine
/
/ when she hears the…
To My Surgeon - by
No-one else sees me
/ drowning in the white wave
/ sprinkled with a terrible salt
/
/ invasive lobular carcinoma
/ is difficult to identify
/
/ but you take one…
Second Opinion - by
We went to Leeds for a second opinion.
/ After her name was called,
/ I waited among the apparently well
/ And those with bandaged…
Nothing - by
Because she is exhausted
/ and confused,
/
/ and doesn’t want to argue,
/ and can’t speak,
/
/ she dreams of nothing
/ for a thousand years,
/
/ or what the nurses…
Teddy - by
for a child with leukaemia
/
/ Teddy was not well.
/ Teddy had been feeling sick.
/ Teddy had to go to hospital.
/ Teddy was told that…
Night Sister - by
How is it possible not to grow hard,
/ To build a shell around yourself when you
/ Have to watch so much pain,…
Recovery Room - by
The noise in the recovery room
/ Was half footfall and half hum
/
/ Like a well-mannered gallery
/ Of pictures that I could not see.
/
/ And…
Visiting Hour - by
The hospital smell
/ combs my nostrils
/ as they go bobbing along
/ green and yellow corridors.
/
/ What seems a corpse
/ is trundled into a lift and…