Shell Shock Poem by Margaret Kollmer

Looking down from my pethidine perch
while a million sterile hands
probe and explore
a body
without a face;
a face without a name...
And only a little white arm-tag
to tell the story of the amorphous shell
lying prone under pristine sheet -
insignificantly green.

The anaesthetic takes hold
and somewhere
down the caverns of the mind
a soundless voice cries
and lifeless arms flail in protest -
because that shell
is mine!