Sometimes you have to write something and at that exact moment, the only reason you write it is for yourself. Sometimes it just pushes out of you, like a birth, a force which will not be contained. And then when you see the words scribbled out like that, you see what you are truly dealing with. And you kind of shock yourself by the rawness of it.

So you keep it hidden. I mean, you are glad you wrote it because it helped you to get it out, but it did not change the reality of what you expressed.

This poem is like that. It burst out like a torrent in mid 2021 and was just a few words in a notebook which was the only witness to what had taken place. Then in Feb 2023 someone asked me if I could contribute to a bigger picture and I thought to myself, ‘will this be ok?’ but I trusted them, so I let them see it. They said ‘can you add more?’ and I reckoned I could. So I did.

Then in March 2023 it was part of a beautiful service held by NHS Charities Together ‘Honouring health and care staff’ – 75 years Service. https://nhscharitiestogether.co.uk/honouring-75-years-of-service-and-sacrifice/

Looking back I can remember the day it was first written and now I think to myself of all those thousands of other NHS workers who were working that day and what faced them. And I wonder where they all are now and how they all are now. I wonder how much has changed for them since then, because of all that, as it has for me.

The only way I can honour what happened is to share it and trust that in the release and in the giving away, that in itself, is a kind of offering too.

these walls are witness

Just along the way
these walls watch intently
as ordinary, fragile lives
are pushed to the limits
by professions
which once made their hearts sing
now just trying to make ends meet
what with so much dependent on their
every move.
These walls are witness to
slumped shoulders over
half drunk cups of tea
heads in hands
lifted briefly only by
kisses blown through interior windows
from fellow workers,
passing the baton
shift to shift in an endless cycle
of extraordinary intense care.
These dependable walls witness to the
flow of movement,
of repeated footfall,
the rise and fall,
of imperceptible movements
hearts try to hold inside.

Just along the way
these walls, though still full of photos,
are witness to
a new found emptiness within
echoes of memories
beds that no one is coming home to
hands left unheld
the soft heads to plant kisses upon
gone now
the space silent
full only of absences
These walls expand around
loneliness that will not be contained.

Just along the way
these walls are thick with grief
sorrow rolls down the pale yellow paint
pain reverberates through every single streak
These walls are saturated, breaking open
from the inside out
These walls hold the horrors of the world
witness to the darkness
listener to the howling, wrenching cries
hearing the most devastating things in the world
And the most beautiful
love that is poured out
in words, in tears, in kisses on cold foreheads
in dreams lying shattered
shards of glass under tender feet
They tread softly here
take shaky, sweaty hands
lead them where they do not want to go
And as the mourners leave
these walls feel exhausted faces pressed
against the coolness of their paint
trying to absorb their distress
heads resting briefly,
before rising again to meet other lives waiting
to be walked inside these walls.