Home

When the time comes to die
there is a rightness in dying.
The surgeon who will not operate again,
the one you trust, affirms your decision
to leave the hospital, go home.
The other, who promised life,
of whatever kind, on half a liver,
snubs us as we walk by. He's known as
The Butcher. The lift speeds down past
Speech Pathology, Stomal Therapy,
the Department of Rehabilitation,
the Department of Resuscitation,
and you are out in sunlight again,
a free man, delivered from your dread
of hospitals. It's summery, you lean back,
shawled, in dark glasses, peaked cap,
tell me I drive well, knowing
I've come late to this maturity.
Then it's district nurses, physios,
pills and paraphernalia,
but mostly what is, is home. And us.
We will do what can be done
when nothing can be done.
You settle down to things, grateful,
uncertain: the last phase.
If death teaches us how to live,
the lives we have lived teach us how to die.
This is the harvest, and the cutting down.