The Duchess

Unexpectedly for me at least, the lockdown has produced a surge of creativity that I did not expect.

For the first time since my early twenties, when the results were predictably embarrassing (little experience of the world combined with a restricted worldview, given the restrictions of my home life), I have been writing poetry.

For the moment, I’m grouping what I write under a general banner of Lockdown Lines.

They are not all about the lockdown, but they have all been written while I am in lockdown.

I have posted a few already. This is one of those that is not about the coronavirus, but is about a lady who was in the bed opposite me when I was in hospital two years ago.

No notes or anything like that were taken at the time, but I have never forgotten the incidents I describe below. The section about what her past might have included is entirely from my imagination: all the rest really happened.

My father had died just a week before I went into hospital – a key cause was dementia. Perhaps that’s why Doris remains so clearly in my mind.

The Duchess

Swaddled in zebra-stripe velour she dozes,

Lunch barely touched on the over-bed table.

“Doris,” the time-starved nurse had pleaded,

“You must like fish and chips” ...

As though not eating was entirely a choice.

Broken hips will heal in time once reset;

A mind tick-tick-tocked into the past is gone.

Her son sits beside her, head bowed low;

There’s nothing to say and

He makes no move to disturb her 40 winks.

Next day, Annie and Joan urge her to “Get up!

“Try out your bionic peg!” they cackle.

I call out that the physio’s not here

And at last a nurse comes,                 

Bringing an end to impending disaster.                     

Doris, Doris duchess of The Dolphin,       

Known in the Duke’s Head but never in the Florin;

There you’d sip a stout or a port in a storm

Laughing with the girls and singing until dawn;

Around the Joanna you would croon a bar or two,

You could smoke like a trooper and tell a joke so blue that

You’d set the crowds ahowling and make a sailor blush

But you were always a lady and never just some lush.

On the bedside cupboard there is a bottle,

Gaudy plastic full of liquid pinky red:

‘Cherryade’ or so the label claims.

Hardly a Cherry B,

Never mind a stout or a port (in a storm).

In the middle of the night Doris demands

“Boy! Boy?” Querulous, tremulous and lost.

A nurse tries to calm her. Soothing sounds.

At last she drifts again ...

As though not sleeping was entirely a choice.

27 April 2020