Whelks is an ugly word
when they are a collective noun
of chinking that nestle her neck;
tiny roosting birds
in a camouflage of greys
on a red string of hope.
Her breathing is stridor, fractured.
Her clavicles fragile as wishbones
Here is the cold compress,
here the father’s slow caress
of forehead, forearms, fingers
while the mother gowpens feet
that have not yet walked, her mouth
moving round old words.
barely rising, barely falling
while the whelk-shells chingle
The awl lies on the night-stand.
His palm is raw. Four days now, of
twin holes in each thick-lipped home.
Outside, the rain tries to wash
the smashed three days
from the back of the axe.
a scuttling of brief chimes
between each dog-bark-cough.
Where the sea sucks at limpets,
fresh whelks are walking
their one-legged way into
the next day’s charm, and,
perhaps, a sea-salt sound
of slightly deeper breaths.
One Response to “Charm for croup”
Jodie Hawkes
I really like this, the words of the poem stick in my throat. It brings back memories of taking my own daughter to the hospital in Tasmania…
She has Croup. She can hardly breath. I’ve left it a bit too long. I should have brought her here sooner. I thought a bottle of over the counter cough mixture would work. The doctor screws her face up at the bottle. I feel bad. My daughter is floppy. My hands are shaking. I sit in the waiting room watching an Australian game show. I feel guilty that I’ve been working whilst my brother was watching her. They give her a shot of steroids. The old man in the opposite hospital bed is wired up to all sorts of machines. They don’t close the curtains here, he looks at us and we look at him. The nurse asks him if he has any family she can call, he says my brother is dead, and what about the rest of your family, no I don’t see them. She repeats loudly over and over again the instructions for how many times he should take the medication. I think we all know he isn’t listening. He has no where to live. We stare at each other silently. My brother who is with me puts on two silicon gloves, hides bedind the next cupical and does a puppet show for my daughter. My brother eats all the sandwhiches provided and the rest of the green jelly.