POEMS IN HOLY WEEK ii. Monday - City

Years ago there was a period when I seemed to be taking people to hospital for all sorts of reasons, breaks, sprains and illness.  As a confirmed blood donor I felt that this ferrying was part of my deal with the fates to keep me out of the place as a patient!  That compact seemed to hold for a good long time, but now I find that I am visiting surgeries and outpatients more as a customer than a driver!
          As part of my sequence on Poems in Holy Week, I used my experience of going for a test to focus ideas of mortality and, at least for me, one of the ways that we can get a sense of perspective: observation and metaphor.
          I am not sure if there is enough in this poem to make the sense of the narrative clear, just as I am not sure that my conclusion is an ending.  Perhaps that is part of the point!
          I will print the poem here as a way of keeping the sequence alive and also as a way of laying down an expression of a feeling for later development.

Poems in Holy Week

ii.        Monday - City

                  the concentrated dust

I eat each day;

tablets I believe

more slavishly

than those of law;

my packages against

mortality and what’s

inevitable,

                                   I find,

each day, my life acquires

new acronyms, significant

but I don’t know

exactly what they mean

                  I go for tests that are

increasingly intrusive

and undignified

                  just like today when

in the city, in a hospital,

with papers and identity

I’m shuffled off to wait

                  and think,

I stare at chairs,

the sort that do not

fit in homes, but

are the stuff of

                  public space,

The chairs are grey,

with lacquered metal arms

which curve with elegance

up, forward, slightly splayed.

Two curved, matt planes

for back and seat as if

carefully cut from

fragile shell of giant egg,

thin, delicate.  They take

light well, reflecting gleams

in unexpected, subtle ways.

They people emptiness

with waiting space and

give expectancy to absence.

I know I will be called,

things done,

decisions made,

and chairs will not be
a consideration.

I have used punctuation, line length and positioning in more obvious ways in this poem than is my usual approach.  I would appreciate feedback on this, or indeed on any other aspect of the poem.