Each time the bus goes
past the City
Hospital
I find myself naked
in the UV light
but for the one
sock on
and a visor over the
face.
The good laughter
and wrong comic turns
of the nurses hoped me to
a new kind of humanness
before I walked,
shining,
on to work’s
baby doses
of quotidian
disgrace.
"but for the one sock on
ReplyDeleteand the visor over the face."
"...work's baby doses
of quotidian disgrace" :
"good laughter
and wrong comic turns"
I rest my case.
Sorry: "a visor", not "the visor".
ReplyDeleteThe good and the wrong, the discovered nakedness and the exposure that can't be hid, the dread and the laughter, the humanness and the disgrace -- these are the acknowledgments, in a poem that bravely recognises the complexity of a harsh present. In its full spectrum of helpless vulnerability and hopeful possibility. The bus ride in this case becomes a roller coaster ride, letting us off at reality. Hard, but a fair let-off, in all honesty.
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