One street

if you stand long enough
On a corner, anywhere
Something will happen
sudden, surprising,
To catch your eye, or ear

this morning a young man
chatting aloud
"I'm on my way to Casualty
The swelling ... it hasn't
gone down, it's gone game"


This evening, a sunset,
an interlude, interrupted
by an ambulance, eyes blazing
gliding through twilight.

Transport of hope, and
(I cross my fingers)
I-hope-it never-happens.


A bit rough to be called a poem!
These sobering thoughts come from having attended an INSET day at special-special school and doing compulsory dysphagia training, and emergency evacuation from the hydrotherapy pool procedures. I did not bring my swimming cossie, but I should have, it's no good watching from the side as four others flip a pretending-to-be-unconscious person out of the pool and roll her over, in one smooth movement. I'm not sure I'd be that calm if someone was having a cardiac arrest.

I do feel less like a 'new girl' at school now, and one problem area has been addressed with surprising ease (we'll see if it works tomorrow, when the students return). I also had an exciting discussion about creating a mockup of Antarctica in the school yard, to be experienced in a multi-sensory way by anyone who wants to take a quick trip to the
South Pole this term! Something to get my teeth into. Pass the pemmicam...

The building in silhouette is the Trinity Rooms and it is situated near Stroud Hospital, in case it isn't clear from my poem. This area is less than half a mile from my home in Stroud, Glos, Deepest Englandshire.

I do realise this is a dreadful blurry photo, but it was more of a challenge to try and do something with it than to publish the sunset I was attempting to capture when the ambulance turned up!