At the Hospital

Limbo-land, halfway house
where past and future disconnect;
a place of wheeled-in beds and bed-ridden age
full of bleeps and tubes and monitors.

And waiting for nurses, waiting for visitors
waiting for lost dignity to return;
a place of moans and mops and closing curtains
and strangers with gloved hands;

and frail bodies murmuring to nobody.
A timeless place were day and night
drip by in a daze of formless thought,
were the hardy brave a zimmer-frame

and the weak are levered into wheelchairs
like wrinkled children devoid of joy.
Our visit punctuates the stale hours
with proffered grapes and chocolate.

Where the mother? Where the daughter?
What fall and failing led to this:
an agony of sighs and sad goodbyes
and disbelief at a world amiss.