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