Hospital Diary
I
The strip lighting, unlike coenzyme Q10, sucks
moisture from skin – papier-mâché masks
of in his case, a GI, and in my dad’s case,
a tall and capable salesman.
Sitting in the upright, I trace the wires, pipes
and other routes in and out of the wall. Yellow
dials are roadwork Stop and Go signs. Oxygen
40% signals a steep incline.
They give him Robinson’s Sugar Free and Lucozade
and mother speaks to nurse of aspartame and
tartrazine; of how the latter made me hyperactive,
and I remember dad at the bottom of the slide,
making his hands warm in the crook of his thighs.
-
The Birds
“Hold them with the blades down and away from you.”
You had such light wrists, they moved like tendrils of smoke. When the scissor metal flashed I held my breath, like mothers must when children play with cutters. You took them to the bathroom with you, despite my pleas. We’d been shaping coloured tissue paper to stick against the windowpanes. A sugar-paper owl with luminous purple, green and red panels of breast stood behind the basil, flat against the glass, painting shards of coloured light onto our wipe-clean tablecloth.
When you came back from the bathroom (I discovered your pile of neatly snipped toilet roll triangles at bedtime – you thought they would be useful) you said, “Let’s make black birds,” and by that you meant the jackdaws, crows and ravens that thrilled you so. I remember the first time you saw a raven striding across the botanical gardens. You squawked with excitement and its neck snapped round at the shrill sound. It looked like a key figure in royal history – a dark usurper in a gleaming, inky cloak.
“Why is that crow so big?” you asked, yours and its eyes locked together. Capable of cruelty, that bird, I thought. I didn’t like you looking at it – it seemed depraved and dangerous. A villain.
“That’s a raven. They’re of the same family as crows–” but before I could finish facting you, you had said, “I love him!” You got closer than I’d thought possible – close enough to pet its shifty head, but you didn’t. You mirrored its birdy movements and made your fingers into a shadow puppet beak. You funny little thing.
You drew ravens, crows, jays, rooks and jackdaws anywhere you could find a paper space. The corners of serviettes at birthday parties (everyone in your class was turning six), at the back of the address book on my writing desk, on electricity bills and a note to the milkman. So, we snipped the sugar-paper into corvus birds of different sizes, but we didn’t cut out panels for our stained glass, because you’d said, “No, they must be blacker than the night.”
-
Disarmament
I dreamt a raven lost its beak.
Humpty Dumpty on the wall -
looks down, and off it comes,
like fake Santa’s beard.
The glossy fingertrap,
or gothic ring, rests on butter blades
of spring grass.
He’s not in pain and I’m amused –
black feathered bowling pin,
has been disarmed and can’t caw
death tales now, or other mischief.
-
5.
Around the same time the Tories asked, What Makes Us Happy,
another question, equally questionable, popped up on the radio:
What’s Your Favourite Number?
This wasn’t talk on first dates, like do you prefer yellow or red
(the coward or the beater; optimist or the lover; Norwich or Manchester)
But a grown man mathematic writer, data gatherer, motivation cultivator,
freakanomic spectator, called Alex.
It’s really caught people’s imaginations!
