Visitor

Corridors like desolate arteries, signs declare
maternity wards, operating theatres, the mortuary;
and finally the jaundiced glow of Ward 18.

Life-supporting machines thrum behind green curtains– 
the barely born and the near dead demanding privacy.
Death steals in without fanfare, gently closes the door.

And there you are in your bed, coma-drifting
between the abandoned islands of your remembered life.
A temporary name on a cork-board. Nil By Mouth.

Reduced to oscillating vital signs,
an artificial beep declares your existence,
that here is life to be preserved.

Dabbing your forehead with a damp cloth,
your eyes skitter behind their lids.

A drip bubbles; amber liquid creeps along the tube
taped to your forearm, bound for the perforated vein.

Crossing the ward to the window, the crematorium
chimney stack rises like some temple to forsaken gods.

Ash fills the sky like an ill sleet of snow,
as though all the outcast angels are descending at once.

Published in Anesthesiology