Cancer Villanelle - by
Needles plunge. Consultants come and go.
Today, leukocytes are easy to locate;
tomorrow, next year, they may sink below.
hospitals
After Visiting an Asylum - by
I saw them sitting on a grassy bank –
/ Under the shade of mighty trees they were;
/ Yet those they saw…
Neurology Outpatients - by
The consultant’s room
/ a gallery
/ exhibiting the scans;
/ my head
/ an apple sliced,
/ my core on public view.
/
/ To launch the show
/ an invited few
/ stand round, comment
/ on…
When Mum Describes a Horse - by
When mum describes a horse
/ She has seen from her low bed
/ Galloping across the white wall
/ Or through it
/
/ We cough and…
Sala de Esperanza - by
The sign on the hospital wall
/ identifying the space
/ begins with a Spanish phrase—
/ sala de espera,
/ waiting room.
/
/ A more symbolic phrase
/ may have deeper…
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,…
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
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…
Adam, There are Animals - by
There is a small fox
/ slipping through the fabric of morning,
/ still coated in a layer of grey dusk
/
/ and carefully placing his…