Member Poem

Not an emergency

Flowing the artery of the Great West Road
see the high building I worked in, belly swollen
You are thirty days old, incubator inside
an ambulance, blue lighting past that office

where as-if-nothing-has-happened my colleagues
will be making their weekend plans
passing the brown envelope for donations
for someone’s birthday cake

as three lanes of traffic part for us.
This is not an emergency
only an impatient ambulance driver
versus London’s friday night gridlock

We don’t stop at the red lights. I cannot
jump out, scale the glass walls, press my face
against up lit windows, gaze at remnants
of my old life.