SURGING SEA 1971

A BOY AND GIRL PATIENTS ON A LOCKED WARD IN 1971

Yiska feels
the knife blade
with fingers

blunt as hell
she mutters
and puts it

down again
by the plate
butter knife

I tell her
sitting down
beside her

for our tea
in the ward
(the locked ward)

Ted serving
lovely nurse
soft giant

feeling low?
Yiska nods
and picks up

a sandwich
and nibbles
I recall

the last time
that she sliced
her thin wrist

the right way
in the bog
blood spurted

the window
and walls
as she turned

but so far
she hadn't
tried to hang

her sad self
as I had
(and failed it)

speak later?
I ask her
others eat

around us
dark silence
depressives

suicides
(the failed ones)
hard drinkers

drying out
after tea
we walk off

together
hand in hand
can I help?

I ask her
I need out
of this hole

she whispers
but she knows
as I do

you can't walk
through locked doors
of the ward

I kiss her
she hugs me
two lost souls

in one vast
surging sea.