It was a Sunday Night and the Hospital was Short Staffed
Hooked to a drip,
she abandons her father’s mizpah ring
into my hand,
falls back onto a pillow
and labours whispers that make no sense.
At midnight, a priest scurries to her bed.
I sit, stand, sit, until a nurse guides me
to a visitor’s room. In darkness,
at two in the morning hot tears slide to my ears,
while an on call surgeon gives her one last chance.
I shiver in the heat of June
and she’s out of it in morphine.
After thirty years of daily offerings,
when I need God, prayers come cold and rote,
pleas remain in my mouth.
A steady voice asks about next of kin,
a pen draws a line across a page
and I taxi home to my daughters.
*
Sometimes I sit with her possessions:
folded paper with one stitch of ribbon
marks her twenty first birthday in 1943,
a card signed from family whose names
are as obsolete as themselves:
Cissy, Gertie and Albert.
On special occasions, I wear
a blue silk jacket,
handmade for her the year I was born.
Maria Isakova Bennett
Maria, from Liverpool, is widely published and has won and been placed in several international competitions. Last summer Maria was awarded a Northern Writers’ Award by Clare Pollard and launched a limited edition stitched poetry journal, Coast to Coast to Coast. Her pamphlet, All of the Spaces is published by Eyewear.
http://www.mariaisakova.com/coast-to-coast-to-coast-journal/
https://store.eyewearpublishing.com/collections/eyewear-pamphlet-series/products/all-of-the-spaces
