‘WARLD’s END’

I still miss you.
You lived in a cottage
named ‘WARLDSEND’.

No label ever fitted you:
a cheat and liar, fuelled by:
alcohol, tobacco and steroids.

I did not approve of your behaviour.
But you were part of my life
and I miss you.

In a summer, that I cannot otherwise recall,
I returned from a holiday to my work as a doctor.
Pointing to the front page of the latest newspaper,
my Senior Registrar asked me:
“Was that your patient Peter?”

[When I was training in psychiatry I was ‘allocated’ a psychotherapy patient. I was this patient’s doctor right up to the time of my patient’s premature death. My patient died accidentally. Drunk, my patient fell asleep in his bed whilst smoking. The oxygen cylinders under the bed [for my patient’s asthma] did the rest. My patient was blown out of the roof of Warld’s End cottage]