.

Face-to-Face

Meeting up, Darjeeling tea,
So familiar, you and me.
Here’s your cup, you raise it up

Do a little “cheers” to me,
Joke on “hospital-it-tea,”
Say, “How healing is a cup,

More than a mask, as we sup.”

.

.

Nightmare

for Mike Lancaster, a friend who may have a routine operation

You’re on a bed in a hospital,
Your head laid back and comfortable,
When—squawking, flashing, lumbering
Through theatre swing doors stumbling
With caution lights and alarming noise
In real life wheel size not from toys—
A two-pronged yellow forklift truck
To which, in anesthetics stuck,
You groggily gawp and shout “What in hell?!”
Soft murmurs hum, “You’ll soon feel well.”

You notice surgeons masked like robbers,
See needle nurses and stand-by swabbers,
With fingerprints rubber-gloved and washed
Who keep their distance to not be squashed,

Who have half unfastened your belly button—
No eye contact—you’re mute as mutton—
Have set the ramp where will be rolled
Your gallstone boulder made of gold.

.

.

Damian Robin is a writer and editor living in the United Kingdom.

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7 Responses

  1. Cheryl Corey

    Damian, I just love that first poem with its nice play on “hospital-it-tea”. Very witty.

    Reply
    • Damian Robin

      Hi Brian thanks for changing the spellings in the main post.
      Could you re-place the comment I made to Cheryl so she will then know I have acknowledged her.
      You could even leave in the bit about the spellings as she mentions them. You could say they have now been corrected by our diligent backroom staff.
      Thanks Diligent Backroom Staff :^)

      Reply
  2. Margaret Coats

    Cheers to the cup! I have my own of PG Tips right here, and I will surely let no mask come between us. Delightful little poem, Damian. Hope the surgeons rob Mike Lancaster of his gold and get him out of hospital fast. Tell him not to show any suspicious symptoms, or he risks being locked up with no treatment or fresh air, and maybe even no healing tea!

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Margaret, I have an essential and vast supply of PG Tips in my kitchen cupboard… my day doesn’t start without a mug of tea… a bone china mug, of course.

      Reply
    • Damian Robin

      Through my childhood I accepted ‘PG Tips’ as a name and though it was usually displayed with an Indian woman among bushes. Only later did I understand they were tea bushes and that the tips of the tea plant have the best flavour. I am at present into DECAFF YORKSHIRE TEA. Tasty but not brutally driving.
      Mike is thriving and thinks the stone(s) had been sapping his energy for years. I hear no mention from the surgeons of what they ran off with.

      Reply
  3. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Damian, “Face-to-Face” is a wry smile of a poem with excellent wordplay – I too love your “hospital-it-tea”. Once upon a time, when I lived in England, tea cured all ills and was the restorative elixir prescribed on every police programme after news of a foul murder.

    “Nightmare” conjures up a chilling picture that would certainly make me think twice about having a routine operation… is there any such thing as “routine” these days? In these strange Covid times, nothing seems straight forward when it comes to anything medical and the word “hospital” sends a shiver down my spine.

    Reply
    • Damian Robin

      Tea, Susan, so “English” yet from invasion and colonising India. Yet Chinese taking big steps in the T-market after being very sectetive about their brewing in the 1800s and a little after. {HERE insert piece of agitprop ‘Tea with Erping’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEiT0XJ9doQ China’s 3 Warfare on the World }

      Great that you can get PG Tips — are they imported and hoarded ? (You said you have a stash). I too am starting my mornings with tea now.

      I heard that in Hungary milk was only drunk in tea for a medicine – so milk tea was associated with illness. I think that would not be so prevalent now. But still – tea for healing.

      My wife was in hospital a year and more ago in the near-lockdown here. No visits and no training for staff to deal with patients’ mental isolation. Staff could not touch patients or sit on the bed. I was only allowed to see my wife immediately after her heart operation because they did not think she would pull through. She did pull through, after days in an ICU [there’s a rhyme], plucky lady. I like this, of the many euphemisms around death — ‘pull through’.

      My friend, Mike, also pulled through well. However, I have had no reply from him after sending the link to the poem — maybe he died of shock or chagrin as I did not get his permission to use his name. Though he is on holiday in Portugal.

      Great to chat to you Susan, with or without Chinese porcelain brew-up.

      Reply

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