Albert

He pulls his covers to his chin,
pegs them with rusted fingers,
his oxygen mask pushed up
like the cap he wore in the Hussars.
 
The Consultant, a voice smooth
as molasses, peers over half moons
to persuade Albert to take his tablets.
He cups his ear, scrinches his face.
 
In the night-hush of the ward
light spills from the nurses station.
Albert beckons me, says not to worry,
he hopes he’ll be home soon.
 
I like that he always calls me Maid
despite the new stiff white coat
carving crescents in my calves.
He worries it is past my bedtime.
 
While he sleeps I slide his mask down
to ease the heaves of breath.
I find his stash of tablets smuggled
in the shrug of his shoulders.
 
In the morning his bed is stripped
down to the shiny plastic cover,
his scant belongings parcelled up
for no one to collect.
 

Judith Wozniak

Published in These are the Hands: NHS anthology, 2020, ISBN 978-1-911 1048-40-4

 
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Going Home

Her bus wheezes up the hill past Pisgah Chapel
where her mother played the organ each Sunday.
Sooty terraced houses lean together like bad teeth.
 
She sees Trefor the butcher closing for the day,
setting out sluiced trays with a fresh ruff of paper,
Elias Funerals with their display of dusty flowers.
 
On the corner outside the Co-op, Howard Marks,
down from Oxford, smokes rollups with bad boys
from the Comp, turning heads with his long hair.
 
Children spill from The Fish Plaice in Moriah Street
clutching Friday night bags of scraps and chips,
licking greasy fingers slid out from mittens.
 
Once they pass Langford’s Dairy the driver slows
to drop her off, between stops, at the Top Cross.
She remembers teaching him at Marlas Infants.
 
She skirts the puddles in the lane to her cottage,
unpacks her basket; salty cockles, laverbread
from Bridgend market. Treats for her daughter
 
home from London for the weekend.
There’s time to heat the bakestone for Welsh cakes
before Willy Pentre’s delivers fresh eggs and…
 
Did you have a good snooze Gwen? A girl
in a plastic apron is kneeling by her chair
rubbing her arm. She keeps her eyes closed.
 
Gwen is not her name, she’s Gwyneth Dilys and they have put her in the wrong clothes. Her daughter will be coming soon to take her home.
 

Judith Wozniak

Second prize in Grey Hen Poetry Competition, 2021,
published online at Grey Hen Press

 
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Children’s Home

In the morning his breath steams
the windows. He rubs a porthole
in the fogged pane to check again
if anyone is waiting for him.
 
At night he creeps out of bed,
takes care not to wake the others,
tiptoes where the floor creaks,
to talk to the boy in the glass.
 
On Sundays he likes to clatter
his jacket buttons along the railings.
and play that game on the kerb
scooting one foot up, one down.
 
He shuffles in line to the park
where he hunts for fragments
of emerald beer bottle, shiny stones,
treasures to keep in his pocket
 
with the picture of his mother,
folded over and over. He holds
it in his palm until she starts
to vanish in the creases.
 

Judith Wozniak

Published in SOUTH poetry magazine 68, 2023

 
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Changeling

She has barricaded herself upstairs with her baby.
I talk my way into a room backlit by a streetlamp.
Her words trip over each other. She found a sign,
 
a feather hidden under his cot. She was told
he was born with a caul. He should have been safe.
It’s his smell. She’s certain this baby is not hers.
 
He’s lying so still, his face a mask, bone-white,
translucent eyelids traced with inky capillaries.
Then he stirs, holds up a chubby hand
 
fingers splay as he dreams, slowly curl back,
folding his thumb in a dimpled fist. He startles
as I lift him, hold his warm milky sleepiness.
 
Her gaze fixed on the open window, a shudder
of cold rattles the latch. Nets caught on a breeze
sail into the room. She sees an angel.
 

Judith Wozniak

Commended in Hippocrates Poetry Prize, 2022

 
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