Poems by Pam Cox

Fairy tales and such

They come back at dawn,
these seven short men,
from deep in the icy slush
of moonlight depending on the tide.
Back from the cobra-flaring,
gliding and striking sea.
The beach corrosive-smelling
and raw like rust.

She loved the sound
of their foreign tongue,
their brotherly tenderness,
their gratitude for her work,
cooking and cleaning for them.
Heaving heavy cockle-baskets,
They call out to each other
With humorous pet names.

Back again from a distant sea
sweaty with stars or from one
black and flowing like crepe.
Now from a sea that erupts
and falls on them so hugely
they will never come back.

She wakes and all is silent.
Curlicues of black hair
about her ears.
Her red cheeks white.
On the table
the shopping lies agape
like a mouth of grief.






Fifth Floor
(after Edward Hopper)


It’s quiet.
I look round the ward;
patients I hardly know.
Their faces are vulnerable and introspective.
Yet despite their silent and private world
I feel a sense of kinship between us.
Perhaps they allow viewers like me
to witness an echo of our own fears
and disappointments.

Outside it’s dark and drizzling.
The cathedral glows alone by its haunting light.
Tesco is busy, cars queue impatiently.
In late-night cafes, hotel lobbies,
station waiting-rooms, we too may dilute
a feeling of isolation in a lonely public place.
Home appears to have betrayed us,
forcing us out into the night
or onto the road, the hospital, the pub.

It’s noisy again.
The night-shift confers with the day-shift.
Trolleys bump and clatter in corridors,
nurses begin the ‘obs’ round.
Cocoa time and magazines,
a sense of belonging. Small tokens
of human desires and vanities
stand in opposition to the wide
non-human world outside.




Gentle Illness

Every mile passes like the swinging
watch of a hypnotist. Away from people
she imagines the waking world, a place
from which she grows more distant.

She lies at night with open eyes,
loses consciousness for a couple
of hours. Not always, not lately.

Her father tried many things
to help her sleep; warm milk,
a rocking-chair, a ticking clock,
brandy and Brahms. Now, alcohol
or marijuana sometimes work.

At times she feels the need to observe
the nature of sleep; to seek it out
in others like a homesick person
might pore over a family photo album.
She watches her father mumbling, dreaming.

Some nights she wanders the corridors
of the apartment building, knows which
doors to linger in front of; the young couple
making love; the old woman and her
elderly pug dog who snore in unison;
the hospital-shift employee who showers
at 4 a.m., singing falsetto songs.

She takes her red one-speed bicycle,
and rides all over town,
finding herself pedalling home
with the sunrise, the great rhythm
of the universe revealed to her,
the circadian spinning of our sky,
the tidal pull waking us to work
and home again with the sunset.

Sometimes an illness can conjure a strength
or faith you hadn’t known you possessed.
Certain things – like lovers you only understand
when you no longer have them.