“My body is a ghost
No one about but my intelligence
Quickening...”
A bell rang for afternoon rest
She snuggled, wriggling toes under the thin blanket
The weight of things to have to do left
For others. Drip by intravenous drip, liquid moments
Slipping past, minutely marked in measures
Of vital signs and the ward clocks
Keeping pace. The monitor spewed luminous zig-zags
With constancy. A reassuring scrutiny yet keeping tabs
Cast doubt between the pulse, as if such spans
Were truly tight-roped time. And still her limbs
Languid in the sick bed, would not climb
Far from its grasp. Had she fallen victim
To seductive lethargy? This novel willingness
A Stockholm syndrome sign of sickness.
Submission to an opiate order – such stillness
bordering on defeat. It felt then that death
was reeling out the winding sheet, earth
readying itself to open. She caught her breath
to arrest the poised, primal scream. A quickening
mind surfaced in clear, cold realisation, awakening
desires beyond doors, for all the uncertainty of Spring
Epigraph from Elizabeth Jennings' 'Decision on a July night' and with this poem for my Poetics prompt, I've aimed to invoke her commitment to formal verse and somewhat ambivalent attachment to ORDER
PoetryPix 
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