From the West Wing
The hospital sits within a concentric circle of time: through
the window a black bird
sits in a white-trunked tree, a vacant car park sprawls, a train
hurtles by, a sunless day
sucked of joy is suspended grey on a hanger. I have special
powers: can see forward and back,
remember the future in fine cartographic lines — jigsaws of
boats that blur to become animals
drawn with fingers on hot sand. There are coastlines of touch,
a vulnerability in the face
of sharp pointed instruments — I am reminded of miracles:
the small happy cloud I lived on mothering
two small boys. You endlessly scroll on your phone and I turn
the pages of a book with images
of temporal sculptures from water, ice, leaves, feathers. It occurs
to me that we live in a world
that is both hard and soft: not easy to distinguish between them.
The magenta wall of this room
is an unkind industrial colour. You sleep, half-turned away and
your lashes sweep a cheek moments ago
an angry red. Time is a stretch of nerve fibres: anticipation and
regret. Across the river, first lights blink.
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