One day dark clouds hung in my mind

and rain fell urgently in my soul.

It washed over me in a flood

and the salty sting cut my eyes.

Why lie here lonely in despair

living for meaningless goals,

like visits and the next meal;

prisoner of the Healers.

 

It is time to leave this place.

Where like a child I exist.

No longer master of my life,

a thing between life and death.

The dreary days come and go

each the same with little change.

Let me pick up my life,

a new one but my own.

 

Then sun split the clouds.

Raindrops dried on pane

and breaking all the rules

I opened the window.

Charlie came to see me,

turning on the breeze

to land on the narrow ledge.

Beak yellow wide, demanding.

 

Fed on grapes he hardly tasted,

quizzical piercing eye staring,

he shrieked a raucous cry

and fled the ledge, circling.

He called again to us who lay

on beds that seldom moved

despite their rubber wheels.

Up, up he soared, “up, up he called.”

 

I rose and told them it was time

for me to test the other world.

Time to say thank you and good-bye,

to join Charlie on the wind.

 

 

David Garlick, Victoria, March, 1996