ODE TO HORSEY NURSES

In the ward the Nurses come and go

but they’re not talking of Michelangelo.

Oh No!

And one came down to me and said

‘You’re taking up an acute bed’.

Which meant, of course, that I wasn’t acute.

I may have been cute but I wasn’t acute

as far as she could see.

‘I think I’m fairly acute, you know,

acute enough,’ I retorted.

‘You’re not acute’, she snorted,

not really acute.

You’ve only had a CABG with complications,

a collapsed lung and a duodenal

and then this whatever-it-is infection,

if I had my way I’d have you

out there at the bus stop on your head.’

‘I think I’m fairly acute,’ I said.

‘Reasonably acute, but not yet

 among the all-but-dead.

Why don’t you give me a private room

as I’m entitled to with VHI?’

‘VHI me eye, 

are you so green? 

Wake up and smell the Ovaltine.’ 

In the ward the Nurses come and go.

Do they talk of Michelangelo? Oh No!

‘Mr O’Driscoll,’ they intone,

‘have we put on our dressing gown?

‘And did we move our bowels today?

And what, oh what, is our Birth Day?’

© Ciaran O'Driscoll 2014