Travelling Together

Sue Mayfield was writer-in-residence at Musgrove Park Hospital, Taunton in January 2011.

Working at patients’ bedsides, and in outpatient waiting rooms she talked with children and adults, about journeys they had  made -  epic and everyday, geographical and emotional – helping them to create simple horizontal 14-word poems.

These poems will be displayed as coloured word strands, travelling along the walls of a temporary link corridor, when construction of the new surgical wing begins later this year.

   From the corner, where I first kissed her, dancing elated all the way home.

   By train from Capetown to Victoria Falls. Bridge over rainbow spray, smell of woodsmoke.

   Driving from Porlock to Taunton, January morning. Sheep stand, breath steaming, in frosty fields.

   Straight from my heart  –  in channels branching like a river delta  –  my blood flows.

   Once, she pushed me in my pram. Now, in a wheelchair, I push her.