Suffering General

The original Southern General Hospital, Glasgow

Hospitals no longer have that smell

- the fearful pungency of old -

no: there is a casual air

about the hours of waiting, where

random chat is fractured

and coffee cups abandoned

as if this were a station –

a brief halt in life’s affairs

a stop along the line

before the terminus.

Stop: don’t think of terminus,

not here, among the shifting

interrupted lives of those

who miss their names –

impatient calls and repetitions –

then stumble off to share their need

and leave, calmed for now or not,

out into the grey day where fog

swirls round a half-built tower

and coughing echoes in the biting air.

©C.M. 11/11

Winter Song

In winter dark, the western dark
where lights glow small and waiting hearts
feel grow again the aching hope
that Christ will come, will come to them,
the winds of heaven cut to the bone,
the time-shaved bone in long night’s sleep.
But here the Christ-child still may seem
to come in love to frozen souls,
the warmth of flame to lone hearth-stone
and hope among the lingering husks
of leaves that cling on tortured trees
to whisper that the time is near.
The shadows dance, the candles flare.
We wait in quiet beneath the storm –
our Lord will come, the child be born.

© C.M.M. Advent06