The waiting room

This place. Pills in cardboard cups.

A socket of garden

sealed behind a window.

Past shrivelled to vulgar

fractions. 

.

Like the birds that all at once

feast eyes till sky pulls,

doubts of melody startle by,

seek shelter,

lose hold in my flutterings.

 

Someone tells me she cares.

Someone else cares too.

His face squares a frame

that found the wall opposite

my bed and perched.

 

Hard to believe

he cares.  His eyes shun,

like a bird’s.

 

This place waits.

 

Strangers pop the door

I’ve never gone through.

Monitor faces bring busy hands,

noisy shoes. Like birds,

they remind of fat birds.

Slow.  Circling.

 

A bird sparks the window.

Lingers.  Linnet.

Carduelis cannabina.  Sings

 

me across to that picture.

In crashes a nurse. Fusses. Leaves.

 

Steadiness again,

tightened by hands in blank

sheets till my eyes lock,

and shock sheer into his eyes.  A figure there,

 

stretched out with the grasses

on a river’s bank.

A river radiant in song.

 

This place waits for me.

kj8feb10