Trauma Incidence

They come in different forms.
The child waving to approaching parents
Sees them swept away by a careening lorry.

A father returning from market through glass strewn streets
Cannot find his family home.
Only empty space –
rubble and body parts.

Turkey, Greece,
Small enough comfort for able flee-ers;
Horror for the refugee who’s forward flight cannot outdistance
The creeping grip of disloyal neurones,
Of spreading paralysis.

My trauma tonight
Is the hand that cannot reach to clean,
The toilet door that won’t unlock,
The basin taps that are hell to turn
The stagger out for help to pull my pants up,
To have my eyes wiped.

My brother, my sister
On that heartless road,
Forgive my despair in my comfortable home.
Perhaps this cosseted impossibility is beyond me,
But I bow before your desperate suffering.

May we meet at the river
And link arms as we fall into the distancing surge.