CONVALESCENCE

We drove towards the River Dee – down walled lanes

with rhododendrons festooning the sandstone,

their attic blooms in imperial colours –

to visit a doughty friend convalescing,

from two knee replacements, in Seize The Day,

a recently opened upmarket care home.

As we turned into the drive, I realised

that this, long before rebuilding, was where

my mother had first trained to be a nurse –

sixteen, with her friend, Belle. They cared for children

with TB from the Liverpool slums.

This unpolluted estuary’s airs

and the views of distant Welsh hilltops

through the coast’s pine woodlands might soothe and cure.

Our friend was listening to La Traviata.

I recalled a photo of the two girls smiling,

in uniform, on a veranda

with two of their charges on iron bedsteads.

The children stare at the camera

as if it were their only photograph.