Neil Douglas worked as a GP and Community Paediatrician in London’s East End. His poems have appeared in The North, AMBIT, Perverse, the NHS anthology ‘These are the Hands’ and most recently in the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award 2022.

Contact: ndoug002@gold.ac.uk

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Otto

Dusk on twelfth night, I walk through Manor Park. Locals discard bare Christmas trees on a pile behind the railings. This redundant pile, unadorned save for odd whispers of tinsel, is now six trees high, ten deep. 

On top of the pile stands a boy called Otto. He looks about eight years old. I know his name is Otto because his mother implores him, get down Otto, get down now. But Otto jumps on top of the pile. He grins, springs, bounces. He screams. He whoops. He tells his mother the pine needles smell glorious. He is right, they do smell glorious. He tells how they should be scattered on the ornamental carpet at home ‒ as if pine needles should be for Life not just for Christmas. 

His mother worries Otto might fall, slip below the surface, become consumed; drown in this sea of trees but with each jump the awkward branches mesh tighter, hold firm. His mother cannot know this, and she stands there, watches him, pleads, get down Otto. Good listening now. Nearby another mother hears this and tells her young girl to say hello to Otto. No, she says, I won’t. She takes her mother’s hand. I’m scared of Otto she says. You must be brave, make the first move her mother tells her. 

I amble around the park and twenty-three minutes later I am back there, at the pile of trees. The mother and girl have gone but Otto is still jumping atop the pile, and he is telling his mother that the pine needles smell glorious (he is right, they do). He asks why they cannot be scattered on the ornamental carpet at home. He asks why the girl cannot be his friend. I can barely see his mother now in the descending gloom, but I can hear her. Get down Otto, she sobs, get down.