Who’s Left to Row the Boat, (Tullawalla, page 37 )

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Who’s Left to Row the Boat
… This week it is 22 years since I suffered my first stroke …

The storms are too many to count

Emotional lows had weathered me out

Her journey with MS was a struggle

How much lower could our lives sink

After fourteen years of our battles, I suffered a Stroke

An ambulance came, my brain was in a boat

Floating out to sea, overboard and panic-stricken

I wasn’t swimming, barely awake, and drifting

I had fallen, nothing was working, and not talking

She’s crying, I’m sobbing, my heart is dying

And who’s left to row the boat, I’m thinking

I was jabbed with a needle and silently sleeping

I awoke a day later, in hospital, feeling wasted

My face was limp, mouth parched, was that death I tasted

My mind was active, I thought, where is she

I knew I was bad; the room was all blurry to me

Strong anxieties had set in, I needed to know

Nurses came to me, I pleaded, I wanted to go

“Help me to see her, just give my bed a tow

Please let me go, before I’m covered in snow”

Ivor Steven (c) September 2022