on being at home ... sick

I've been at home sick on-and-off for about three weeks. I've mostly been able to function at work, just a day off here and there, until this week when everything crumpled inside me.

Staying in bed finally brought out strange memories, childhood memories for me. Probably because my window looks out into the Japanese maple's leafy green (dappled green, truly it is but you can't say that kind of thing these days, can you?) and also green painted lintels and bars. It's all very green with bright yellow blue sun in the background.

When I was a kiddie at home sick, or with a long illness like measles, it was the same, the sense of green in the foreground at the window and sun backing up.

Then there's all the life happening, noises of cars and builders and passers-by, so close yet distant because you're stuck inside. This gives it all a kind of echo effect.

I wrote this during the week, posted elsewhere but I'll place it here as well:

the knocking goes on over hours
at intervals
a drum beating the day
at least I have no headache
someone twists a machine
it hums for a minute at a time
otherwise leaves wash
under the green sun
as processes inside me
tremble and stutter
how could you picture this?
as if capturing souls departing
on wax or an old glass photographic plate
sprites maybe in the garden
asking for rain like birds
or these hours are less deja vu
than common
memory darkens
a badly developed snap
but within it still the traces
fibres of light material
a child prisoned in the green grey
room of sickness
where hours are long and gates
creak all the same

4.30pm Wed 3 March Marrickville


I have to say staying in bed gave me a backache. Now I'm lounging and my back feels better, so I will get away from this desk now and return to the sick lounge.



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