some things
live within the blood
from when I was a child
riding my bicycle
to visit up top
where my parents toiled
in the old lunatic asylum
discretely perched
behind the ha-ha wall
I was shaped
to the tasks and functions
of working in mental health
movement into other fields
and naïve dreams
of becoming something
with more glamorous potential
were inevitably fleeting
in the end
after long years
I have come back
and am again that creature
a psychiatric nurse
toiling
in the eternal asylums
of mental health
~