It was the 1994 FIFA World Cup,
141 goals were scored that summer.
I saw nearly all of them on the old wooden television in the doctors’ residence!
The microwave no longer worked, but the kettle did
and I did just fine!
The faded curtains in the doctor’s bedroom
a green and white pattern of ivy,
failed to meet in the middle –
through the gap you could see the stars shine bright.
The reassuring early morning sound of the gardener’s lawn mower:
the bowling green ready to play
Never did I hear the clatter of bowls.
The doctors’ library opened out into the doctors’ residence:
what the whole of this society owes to Aesculapius!
But it was the ill-arranged ephemera of gathered time
that captured me.
Here I grew to appreciate the company of people
who listened to the world.
Kindness of being was there in Clouston ward:
led by a doctor
who without ever really knowing,
made you feel better through just being there.
30 summers have passed since those days,
And today, up and down that dip from Newmachar,
I returned to Kingseat Hospital.
A new housing estate greeted me,
almost a new town,
with no school, no shop,
off-the-peg street names,
off-the-peg houses.
Planners imaginations stifled for profit.
And sitting puzzled amidst this new world,
the roofless hospital ruins.
This is no healing landscape.
Trees planted when the hospital was first built, now mature
Autumn colours comfortingly vivid
the dappled, darting, reflected light,
impossible to catch.