Cardiac Ward

For Linda

Only the planes are missing.

No screeching choirs of excitement.

Just the constant unsettling arrhythmia of beeps and pings 

And a thousand garbled words 

A relentless tsunami of communication, sad, earnest, factual, urgent and hideously cheerful

The roar of butterflies.  

Fluttering around in the chest of my imagination.

Induces stabs of darting panic. You’re not there. 

A long wave of creeping malignant fear. 

Stops me

dead.

Then suddenly out of the aloneness an explosion of joy.

You come running towards me. 

You’re wearing a long woollen coat. It must be cold,

I think there is a brooch on your lapel the way you like it.

The railway station somewhere in Europe après la guerre

Whether you are beside me or not

In the two AM meld of breathing together 

There lies, always insinuating in the gloom,

the faint distant fear of eternal separation.

Inexorable, headlights on the horizon real.

But the little group of islands of you and me and me and you

Disappearing and re-appearing

Are the sepia photographs of the future. 

The destination.