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No-one tells the post office
when your uncle’s in a coma.
Every day the pile of brown boxes
at the front door grows and
the Amazon logo grins at you.
This morning, a heavy parcel shaped
like a long fish, As-Seen-On-TV,
and whey protein,
for the man undone by a flight of stairs,
who sleeps with a CPAP machine.
Wake up, I tell him on our visits,
You have a parcel to collect, and
the blip of the ECG sounds like
that little scanner the post-man has,
where you sign your name while he huffs
and puffs, forever out of breath and furious.
God forbid you’re actually home and he must
do his job for a moment, not just stand
around in high-vis giving halfhearted knocks,
keeping a lookout for vicious dogs,
which are a real problem for the post-man,
it’s on the news
all the time,
they never say the breed
but come on, we all know it’s a pit bull
and the poor post-man never has a chance,
the dog latches onto his leg and he just
stands there, waving his arms,
his little scanner going
beep beep
beep.