They emerge outside the hospital Dazed by our day, In dressing-gown and slippers - The pale ones Searching the sunlight For something familiar; The bright cars and brisk Comings and goings Of life. Behind them sliding doors and Shadows shelve steeply To the sound of phones; Shoes squeal on tiles As routine Criss-crosses with something more fragile. And no one knows Where the edge begins, This strange overlap, But all through the day They gather At the buildings entrance: Anonymous filed numbers, To lean against warm walls And breathe town air And to stand blinking away the minutes Of wide blue spaces, While the summers dust passes Unnoticed In and out of light.

Charles Montgomery, Consultant Psychiatrist, Exeter.

Another of Charles Montgomery's poems, ‘Back Ward at Glenside’, was published in the Journal in March 2013.