In the tendrils of their care
I leaf and learn again.
Life’s better for knowing them
they’re fun, down to earth, so young.
I may be mother, but now
I’m utterly dependent.
They wash me, change me, talk to me
wipe away the spills and tears
clean pin-sites, understand
but do not pander to my pain.
Every morning they pile up pillows
to lift me higher,
an arm under each elbow
and one around my waist, until
a new patient, more ill than me
under investigation
grabs their attention.
At once they are strangers.
Like cattle at dusk their faces
loom in the half-light, voices low
as they struggle with tubes and pumps
to save a life.
I’m left alone
– abandoned –
riding the rocking horse of jealousy
unable to understand anything
till violence envelops
and threatens to topple.
‘Nurses’ is published in In Hospital, poems by Cicely Herbert and W. E Henley (Katabasis, London 1992). Reprinted by kind permission of the author.