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Asylum Notes

If you have ever made porridge for a hundred with
the assistance of three ancient asylum patients
you'll understand how it was each Seacliff dawn
stirring the steaming, resistant oats as the light fell
on the bars, the Brick and the nurses scurrying over
the grass each draped in a red cape and wading through

a layer of mist. The cries from the Brick rose through
the window bars, ejected along with
any objects small enough to heave over
the high sills. These were the patients
whose nursing care eventually fell
into my frightened hands. It did dawn

on me, that a solitary nurse on a dark dawn
morning, moving, keys clanking, through
the dirty dayroom could in one fell
swoop on her starch stiffened person, with
even a sheet in the patient's
hand, and good timing, be easily over-

come. Even after years, I never quite got over
that fear. On night duty in the hours before dawn
I would, as instructed, 'Lavitate the patients,
Nurse', then listen to distorted voices echo through
the long corridors. Outside, there was bricked-up silence with
little interruptions as Matron's emptied bottles fell

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singly into the rubbish tin. It sometimes fell
to her to admonish the inebriate admissions over
at Ladies' Reception. She always ate two fried eggs with
bacon for breakfast. On the Aga at dawn
in my turn, I would cook and deliver them through
her window. I never did master the Aga. The patients

tried to teach me that art. They had patience,
but I was distracted by the tobacco that fell
in clumps from the Zig Zag papers through
my fingers as I rolled ciggies for them. Over
the years I learned to roll with either hand from dawn
to dusk, licking, flicking, and lighting with

nonchalance. Through all this the patients
moved, some in hope, back home. Others fell
ill for always, never over it, never aware of any dawn.