Fidela Poems

Helper of the Leper

From dawn to dusk and often beyond midnight,
she cleans incurable wounds, assures the frightened,
and emboldens the lost, the desperate;

She gives soothing company to the delirious and the dying,
and whispers a prayer for anyone who eventually,
inevitably, dies and is buried here;

She's got no time to suffer from her own wounds
or to tremble at her own nightmares, or to crumble under
the weight of her own frustrations;

Her life has been a wall windowed wide to a view
upon the dire needs of the outcast, slowly wasting away,
the leprous dregs of hygienic society;

"Transcending the selfish self as a person for others"
- - of themselves, these words may just be pious, hollow
cliche, elating yet essentially empty;

But with her generosity, the words acquire a meaning
more profound than their syntax, truer than their intent:
Sister Fidela, helping her fellow lepers.