Happy Friday, crew!
I’m working on a book. Through the COVID lockdowns, I had the honor of serving at a retirement home. The examples those folks were…and how much they taught me, well, it must be witnessed. Here’s a poem/vignette.
Rose
A masked face, anxiously peering out her door,
leaning into the hall
Old ladies have a way of watching the neighborhood
“How are you, Rose?”
“Oh, fine, fine”
Sometimes when I had the time on my rounds I'd visit
She'd be stretched out, watching the gameshows
In her room neat as a pin
A calendar by her bedside with a page of empty days crossed off
The faint pencil line a noose that chokes me sometimes
I brought her a palm for Sunday once
We watched Mass on the livestream
I saw her in hospice when she was dying
not of COVID
Surfacing through a morphine sea
she smiled at me.