Nursing Home Poems

Lillian’s Echo

Lillian sat in the dayroom’s dim embrace—a survivor etched in time. The air clung to stories, whispered secrets, and the lingering scent of suffering....

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Juvenility meets senility
Childlike to childish formality
Nursing home abnormality
Inmates extend hospitality
I run as if they have a malady...

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Old men
sit in wheelchair
drool...

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Oh, find I here as elder in this small place
Some glad respite…

From inside pills 
And journeying on to bitter end

With so many joys of past,...

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Someone saw me digging through the trash this morning
And gave me five bucks
The embarrassed gin-mace of the nursing home volunteer
Plastered to his face 
For the...

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When I was younger, days moved softly,  
an endless waltz of hours beneath the cherry blossoms  
where I walked alone, convincing myself ...

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“Wandering through empty and crowded streets with no destination in sight and sleeping under the sky with the fire burning inside was my life, the...

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that call, a face
    porcelain 
pressed against glass
and dead eyes wrought
from an attic room
    watching us

her name badge was
irrelevant
...

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Silent but Deadly (Written 2014)

In the heart of the nursing home where old folks stay,
Lived Erasmus, a man twinkling in twilight's array.
With a glimmer that...

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We hadn’t visited for a while.
I looked forward to seeing her smile.
We came as often as we could.
Probably not as often as we should.

Mom was...

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“God setteth the solitary in families…” Psalm 68:6 of the King James Bible.

Home assures God’s presence so blest
Where love, mercy, truth and peace reign
Nurturing members...

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My father was locked in on an Alzheimer’s unit of a nursing home.
I asked my mother “how will I know when to leave?”
“You’ll know,” she...

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One disgruntled nursing assistant
calls it: the s..t house.
I overhear the laughter of angels.

The inmates know it as ‘Fair Havens’
some have a sense of humor
they name...

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On the way to the nursing home, we pass many beautiful sights. So many homes with pleasant yards, lawns, and flowers that delight. After so...

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She's slow as molasses,
And really a pain.
Let her stay home forever!
We have nothing to gain.

Taking a walker down the 
stairs?
Is really something, we just
can no...

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