Max thanks lovely telling -not sure about you skipping at the taxi rank
-ouch haha
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Max Richards
Sent: 04 December 2013 01:45
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: 'Home After Three Nights Away'
Home After Three Nights Away
Release from hospital - euphoric
even after only three nights.
Going there by tram felt right,
submitting to the big machine.
Getting wheeled in to the cheery
anesthetist and succumbing...
stirring later wondering when
will the surgeon do his stuff?
He'd done it. First night after,
with lower body numbness and -
one's first-ever catheter -
felt hard, but in the other beds
were chaps taking it harder.
General admiration of nurses.
Next day was the lowest,
too dim to chat when she arrives,
the beloved, with the daily paper
and chocolate, my laptop
and her smile. Taking a walk
round the ward carrying gear
seemed out of the question.
But appetite returns, restlessness;
a slow walk-about is tried
wrapped in one's old kimono
(exclaimed at by old Tim -
he who was in the army the day
Pearl Harbour was bombed,
and then Darwin; lordy, such
old-style rural drawl he and his wife
and son commune in, like Dad
and Dave in the old wireless show).
Rob, opposite, is up to a walk,
so we go together, we discover
our New Zealand background
and stories. Never buy the franchise
for the cafe at the Rotorua Airport.
Once the catheter is out (ouch),
a timid normality resumes,
the nurses with their checking
bring steady reassurance.
Fancy hospital food being appetising!
Fancy the air-con being stuck on Cool.
Fancy the lovely variety of nurses;
the big windows showing Melbourne
at its spring best. Old Tim has been
in agony, now he's telling me Look,
lovely women walking past. And -
country hick he ain't! a local man,
same house for sixty years, same job,
waterworks, for forty. Well, Rob
and I, our waterworks fixed, can
leave. Good luck, Tim. I feel so good
I skip the cab rank, take a tram clanking
home. Slowly up the birch walk.
Buzz, buzz. It's me, dear, slowly up
the stairs, so happy to be home with you.
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