In Deep

By Charlie Bell

He drifts in and out, 
never really sure where, how or why. 
Not even asking those questions. 
Naked, usually unaware of anything,
dead to sense and inner life.
Occasionally he emerges in an undulating dream, 
unable to catch images or their meanings, 
floating heavily in a druggy, vertiginous sea. 
Mainly he feels nothing apart from hallucinatory brushings, 
barely felt caressings, risings and fallings. 
Sometimes there are voices down a well shaft. 
Sometimes there are bleeps and distant klaxons. 
Mostly, there is nothing at all.

The blue-clad crew, behind their masks,
tend his needs as if he were their only concern,
adjusting oxygen; attending to pressure sores; 
changing his pads; adjusting morphine;
checking BP, heart rate, oxygen saturation;
changing drips; emptying the catheter bag.
Unable to see his face, or give a smile,
fatigued and battered,
presented only with a face-down body,
they too, drift in and out -
and all are in deep.

---

Written Word ‘Soul’ poems