Home for Christmas
They left the hospital
while it was being done –
the cold air
took them by the arm;
streets, cars, people,
floated, swayed past.
I’ll do it, he said;
I haven’t lost one yet,
he added, but I will –
scalpel-sharp words
across thousands of miles
of traffic-noise,
their daughter’s screams
in their ears –
open-line
they couldn’t switch off
as they spacewalked around
the craters in Oxford Street,
with their deceptively firm
footholds of Christmas cheer.
.
Sorry, Gerald, I am a bit confused. I gather it is about an operation but what puzzled me is this sentence spoken, I assume, by the surgeon:
“I’ll do it, he said;
I haven’t lost one yet,
he added, but I will –
Is he admitting that although he hasn’t yet lost any patients he will lose this one?
We met these parents after the operation, which was successful, but these were the surgeon’s not very reassuring actual words, not that he intended to lose their daughter but that the operation was risky and there was a possibility that he might. The girl will be in her thirties now. Thanks for commenting, Luigi.
Cheers,
Gerald.