This nature reserve was once
an infirmary for American soldiers,
then a TB sanatorium in the fifties,
finally a psychiatric unit
from sixty-one until asylum was reckoned
a room in a tower block.

Here is a walk called Matron Walk;
old trees and paths, and woods fenced off.
They hold dangerous substances
these woods. We are warned.

No ghosts of battle-scarred GI’s
crouch behind hedges.
No blood-coughing robe-wearers
hunch upon the crumbling benches.
No moon-faced lunatics
knot fingers of despair
at the verdict of the heights.

We throw coins into a frail stream.
Wish, privately.

The conservationists let piles of timber rot naturally,
encouraging frogs, toads, snakes, beetles, and beneficial types of fungi.

To our relief, there are no remnants of Nissen huts,
no distant thrum of the shock machine.
No reek of unwashed gowns to linger in our hair.
Chewing gum and nylons are not to be had.

A Weimaraner poodle chases air, bounds at vacancy,
faithful to its own game.

No ghosts but us.

And one day, when people have spare hearts,
and can live three centuries, if unlucky,
no one will know we came here,
on a day they used to call Thursday,
so long, long ago.

(image source

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