Along the poppy pathway

Years passed. I didn’t realise I was here;
the first prescription brought to mind the trip
to Athens, and the red relentless cheer
of poppies in the agora. Their grip

was subtle as I lay among them, free
from early-age arthritis through the Spring.
The heat, some said, had benefited me;
I wasn’t sure. The trusty torturing

of inflammation very soon resumed
and brought me to that first-known opioid.
My history, from then on, was best inhumed;
I’d taught myself, already, to avoid

the thoughts that hurt, that don’t do any good –
perhaps the poppies helped me on my way.
I’d lost the golden years by adulthood,
yet found some comfort to dispel the grey

and contemplate again the bright blue skies
above me, not in Greece, but anywhere
along the pathway with its gleaming eyes
and heady fragrance through the waning air.

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Published on Snakeskin, August 2025

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This poem is the first in the collection as I think it’s a good scene-setter, in its way. I was 24 when my then general practitioner prescribed co-proxamol for my arthritis pain. When he explained that this medication is an opioid, I had an immediate flashback to the poppies of the agora, experienced just 5 years earlier while I was on a study tour during the second year of my degree. I remembered the dry heat of Greece too and how it had seemed to ease my pain; I hoped that the co-proxamol might do likewise. And it did, right up until it was banned in the UK a few years later due to its increasing usage in suicide.

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Next came co-codamol, then co-dydramol, and finally, while I was in Gloucester Royal Hospital with my first fractured femur, slow-release pure morphine. By then my arthritis pain had advanced to the stage that only pure morphine could address it, so the ward doctor’s decision made a lot of sense to me. Fast forward 2 years, and we increased the dose in response to the second fractured femur. I’ve also been prescribed fast-acting liquid morphine for the fractures and other injuries.

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Morphine does seem to improve my mood, if just because it lessens the pain; that’s often the way with pain meds. And my arthritis started in 1990, so it has been a long road, and I’ve had to learn various coping strategies. One of these is, simply, to cherish above all else what makes me happy, those ’bright blue skies’ in the poem. Presently I’m very grateful that I’m still able to shuffle around my flat, to earn enough to afford the basics, to be blessed with a small circle of close friends, to be loved; nothing more is needed! My health, inevitably, is deteriorating, but I feel at peace with this. I’ll just keep writing for as long as I can.

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