Handful of sorrows and joys, big and small

 Swore I wouldn't think about a hospital

after the small miracle of a morning bus, people walking on their two legs

in the window of the day.

Swore I wouldn't think about the hospital

and its population of wheelchairs

(let alone write about it)

released into the sudden regular pace

of a morning

being neatly cleaned by the sun.

Inside the hospital

bright light and time accumulate

in swathes. In waiting rooms,

in dark circles, fine lines

sitting uncomfortable amid

the bustle and sterile white.

In its limbo,

a memory hardened with bother

finally withers 

and falls off.

People and priorities are pared 

with a scalpel,

swift and precise.

In a hospital, gratitude pricks 

and holds like stitches not yet dissolved

which gradually itch, 

then begin to fall away

in the sun.

A glass of sugarcane juice

a stone's throw from the gate

helps wash them away.

 

Outside, someone has taken the joy

of coordinating purple shirt

with laptop bag.

Thousands to fleetingly glimpse

in shuffling card faces on the street,

the miracle of one's own irrelevance

and the certified recipe for diarrhoea

in a glass of sugarcane juice

which makes it not one bit less sweet.