On the Ward
No place to put a man
and hope he’ll stay together.
The sensible nouns are already exiting the side door.
They know things are not right:
that a phone charger is not a walnut,
that a six-bed ward is not a graveyard.
Poor sort of billet this,
full of idlers and time wasters
sleeping in the wrong bunks:
they take your words.
An old man limps to the window.
He’s wearing my father’s shoes.
The sooner you get me out
of this two bob joke-shop the better.
The verbs will stick it out for a few more weeks maybe
but nothing’s safe from metaphor
striding down the corridors
to wring what’s left
from a man once innocent of poetry.
Annie Kissack is a teacher, song-writer and performer from the Isle of Man. In 2018 she became the Fifth Manx Bard. Her first collection, Mona Sings (2022), reflects her interest in the stories, landscape and languages of her native island.