The fugitive

1
We didn't know he was in his death throes
as he lay all afternoon on the flatbed trolley in A&E,
the furtive little Woody Allen doctor
glancing back over his white-coat shoulder guiltily,
answering the nonchalant young nurse rattily
as she folded her plastic apron for disposal—
there was nowhere for him to send him to—
phoning around again for a free space,
but with no luck.

2
And we didn't realise, as the chrome bars
of the trolley-bed locked around him,
and he mustered his last strength
for a break through a gap in the fence
he'd spotted in the bed's lower left corner,
that a burst main in his capital
was flooding its streets slowly,
the rising waters unhooking gently
from the walls of the emptying terraces
the frames of sepia portraits, washing them
with curled, bright holiday snapshots,
black doormats, brown leather jackets,
with betting slips and pay packets,
with race meetings and nightshifts,
down the affluvial street.

3
Again he was a boy in grey shorts
and a school cap, collecting like seashells
the spent and unspent bullet casings
washed up on the shores of dockland ruins,
the deconstructing victualling yards,
igniting with a spyglass and the sun's
weak rays the lined-up rows of cartridges
for a transgressive whiff of cordite,
as the engine overhead of a doodlebug
made way for a mortifying silence.

4
The ambulance cornered the unfamiliar
junction unsteadily, its siren trumpeting
wearily its one pop hit. From a window,
we watched the late September leaves
fall silently from trees that lined the streets
of a sludgy twilight. With diligence,
the green-dressed paramedic consulted
displays of liquid crystal, made clipboard notes,
as he writhed, moaned softly, his good arm
trying weakly to snap out of the straps.

5
Captured at last, and with the torrent
now breaching the walls of the dog-track,
lapping the steps to the Chinese takeaway,
he watched impassive as his hopes sank
with the outlines of the city—but a scent
of sea salt was in his nostrils; on his cheeks,
the sting of a coastal wind. From where?
Bobbing for a while as the rising waters
sucked up to the lip of the high stockade,
he slipped off his body like a wet suit
to push out over a tall perimeter fence-post
into a featureless ocean, an expert breaststroke
propelling him now with ease and speed
over the surface a noiseless deep, without
the burden of a life to slow him down.

(November-December 2009)