Lost Causes
So long ago, that newsflash, a crash at Lockerbie.
Barely sixty miles from where I worked
Were we on take; were they opening theatres?
Switchboard were laconic; the protective joke.
I can still hear the voice- tight and terse
The flat chill of the words.
It’s mortuary space we need tonight
not nurses.
Or the night they brought the ruptured aorta to theatre.
When we incised the distended belly
the redness rose like a wave, welling
from deep inside. A rising bubble that burst crimson
onto the floor. The sound of the splash,
the futile suction swirling
a life away.
Alone, one ice-black night, I bend to look into the wreck;
turn off the engine as I check the driver. He’s out cold,
his head has starred the windscreen. Fuel floods on to the road.
I reach in, release the seatbelt from its catch and calculate,
what odds on ignition, if and how long
I’ll try to get him out
before we fry?
They say policemen don’t remember their ‘collars’
they recall the ones that got away.
Some nights, when I’m well down the bottle,
my mind draws me back: to the blood,
the black ice, the snap of bone,
the spite of fire.
The night-time phone.
Tom Moody has had articles and short stories published. He has had a prize winning short radio script broadcast. His poems have been published in Orbis and he has an MA in Creative writing from Newcastle University.