Parents hoping a child will die in Europe (and other poems)

Parents hoping a child will die in Europe

A small ward, dark but for the nurse’s lamp,
the upturned palm of his desk and glow
of his body, bent into medications.
The chiaroscuro of GOSH at 2am.
They are leaning in to an incubator
the day after a German child
received a heart packed in ice
and left them at the top of the list,
waiting with their hands together
for just one more death in a continent of lives,
just one pin to prick the bubble of this room.



Coram’s Fields

We got to know them just a little, for a while,
in the playground behind the hospital,
chaperoned by our other, healthy children
in the sand and swings of early Autumn.
...