One Way or Another

They can’t give you a date

for your bypass operation.

Before Christmas,

if you are lucky.

‘We’ll be in touch

each Wednesday

to let you know

one way or another.’

And so your future

waits, somewhere

outside, while you

sit inside and re-read

Muriel Spark: The Takeover,

Territorial Rights,

The Driver’s Seat.

You read them obsessively

each night, as insects

swarm under street lights,

free of consciousness

and futurity.

You see in the New Year,

and time passes,

your nervous system

a shivering horse within you.

But everything can wait,

one way or another,

as you discovered in earlier

visits to the cardiology ward.

The ‘code blue’ announcements

and even the arrival of

ambulances at A and E

downstairs were less rushed,

more stately, than you

would ever have expected.

Just like the helicopter

outside your ward

those times—lifting off

into the night air,

heavy, and unhurried,

towards some unseen future.

David McCooey