Long Nursing home Poems

Long Nursing home Poems. Below are the most popular long Nursing home by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Nursing home poems by poem length and keyword.


Premium Member Broken

 

I am a poet and writer of words,
you know me through my sad poems:
but, there is more to me ... more to this girl,
I found writing at a very young age;
and penning of poetry has become my life.
          
I used to work in a nursing home for old folks,
this job was so emotional it scarred my heart:
I did not want to love them but I did,
and when death came to them I was broken;
there were stories in those wrinkled hands.

I met death in childhood and we have been friends,
sorrow has walked hand in hand with me each sad step:
death you have taken everyone I love,
my baby, my husband, sister, mother, father, grandma;
in cold stone their names are engraved and I grieve them.

I write this deep pain in my sad poetry,
from a bleeding soul the ink drips, drips, drips:
over and over I pen my sorrow and love,
yet, it never ceases, never disappears, never leaves;
so, I write it again and again.
Form: Verse


More of a Story, Then a Poem

 My Fathers House 

It had been years since he had last seen his dad, when he lost his job, 
he hardly came home.    
After many missed birthdays and graduations, he gave up on the notion of a real dad...
Years later, he found him living under a bridge, on a makeshift bed.  
He ate off a cardboard table held together by rocks and twine.  Stored his empty bottles in an old beat up cooler, filled with stale pizza.  They had words that day and he vowed to never return.  As far as he was concerned, his dad was dead...

One day he got a phone call from a nursing home saying his dad was in their care.  
He had requested a visit from him, would he please come.  He had expected many things on that day, but a clean dad with combed hair, was not one of them.
They shared a hot coffee and donut while sitting at a table.  They spoke for hours. 

He asked his son to wheel him to the dresser. He gave him a card with a big blue balloon on it and a circus clown.  "Whatever happened to that little boy?"  he asked him through his tears.  
"I don't know dad, I guess he grew up" while you were elsewhere . 
That night for the first time in years he slept in a dry bed with a real blanket and, a door. 

Somethings he learned to live without , some things he plain threw out, 
but the memory of his son's smile, that he never forgot.  " Its oka dad, 
it flew up in heaven to be with mom " was his five year old reply.   
He once had a child and he abandoned him, just like a circus clown. 

July 26, 2021
Form: Narrative

Premium Member My Treasure of Grandma

 
the day my grandma died I was called by my uncle
to come to the nursing home and told take whatever you want
the rest is going for donation . . .   
I stood in her room with her body still on the bed- weeping
at ninety-five she had little left of her life
but, I found her jewelry box and looking through it
her pink clip earrings . . . 
the ones, I recall from childhood when she would tell stories
and they are now my most precious treasure of grandma 
when I look at them I go back in time
to the kitchen table listening with my huge little girl eyes
grandma encouraged me to write and is the reason
I am the writer, I am today . . . 

__________________________
October 24, 2020


Poetry/Verse/my treasure of grandma
Copyright Protected, ID 10- 1318-112-24
All Rights Reservered, 2020, Constance La France

Submitted to the contest, Podium Placing Promise (3)
sponsor, Brian Strand, Judged 01/02/21

Fifth Place
Form: Verse

Premium Member The Lady and Her Birds Friends

Everyone knew her as Lady Summerworth,
A title she had assumed from mother earth.
She was rich, did what she liked, spoke to no one.
She'd have her breakfast and left when she was done.
Then she would walk slowly to the far garden,
If she would forget the birdseed, beg pardon.

It was her delight to scatter crumbs and seeds.
Sterlings, chaffinches, thrush and blackbirds each feeds
Until they were well-fed with the fare she gave.
Oft she claimed: was she the Lady or the slave?

The nursing home clanged its bell. She went for lunch,
Alas, a heavy rain drenched her like a punch.
She spent many days with an ugly bad cold.
She was old now more than seventy years old.
Yet every day was visited by her friends
All the birds came until the lady's life ends.
Form: Couplet

Premium Member The Transfer Station

He ignored the warning signs and moved carefully forward and backward

In the rocking chair of swept memories and went for a wild white knuckle ride 

Swayed but not faltering although he swung like a junky on amphetamine pills

Soaked in recollections gathered momentum and made dents in the floor boards 


He pictured himself as a young man courting his sweetheart and kissed the bride

Life had dealt him difficult cards but he had upped his game in the view of defeat

Made allowances for bad hands and survived depression divorce and uncertainty

Valued his shortcomings and turned obstacles and flaws into forces of challenge


Photographs trinkets newspaper clippings and baby shoes swished past in a flash

A rollercoaster adventure of vertigo and nausea but also of thrilling escapes

Parachuting down abysses cliff diving and bungee jumps into a red-hot volcano

Confined to a nursing home he refused to accept the dumping ground it seemed


His conscience was clear but that signalled that truths were merely impermanent

And the subconscious tends to rest below an iceberg of prominent falsifications

Like laundering imperfection with fabric softener on kind collages and tapestry

Photo-shopping was before his time but he knew to cut and paste with his mind


Racing thoughts and blustering emotions collected on the windscreen of his soul

First pay packet for an old Enfield motorcycle then traded for an Austin Minor

Redundancy after the miner’s strike and still both his children made it to College

Some say it’s been a junk yard but he fathoms recycling for future generations



26th October 2019


Premium Member Suddenly Swans

A young girl giggles her way through the summer spongey swelter.
Her parents succumbed to the insistent call to close their eyes after a fried chicken picnic,
And the tow-headed two-year-old heeded the call of the nearby pond.
Glints of purest light reflect like sparkles on a birthday balloon, and she runs to catch them,
Until the water is above her tiny head and her giggles become desperate gurgles.
Suddenly swans, like a feathered rescue brigade, land all around her,
And she grabs the beautiful white tail feathers bobbing nearby.
She wakes up on the bank, surrounded by her parents, who, awakened by the deafening cacophony of the swans,
Ran in search of their lost chick.

Eighty years later that same girl lies dying in a nursing home.
While she is old and sick, she is recognizable from her infectious giggle,
Softly curling hair about her face that almost looks like it did in her youth,
Especially when the light from the window bounces off the yellow, semi-gloss paint seemingly found in every institution.
She is alone, like the day of the picnic.
Father and mother are eternally napping along with her beloved husband of 61 years.
But she is happy because in her mind she is still that young girl . . .
Running to the pond, walking down the aisle, and standing by her husband’s side.
She closes her eyes, and suddenly swans fly into view, surrounding her. She reaches out for the nearest glowing white tail feather . . .

The nurses find her peacefully gone, a smile on her face.
And, strangely, clutched tightly in her right hand, they find a long, pristine, white feather.

April 16, 2019

Going Broke

According to Quebec Health rules.    
On welfare 95% you pay.                
And my mind is like  twisted tools
Living in a nursing home is this way. 

On welfare 95% you pay.                  
Life in a gold cage ; few perks here.    
Living in a nursing home is this way.
And foodie events bring cheer.   

Life in a gold cage ; few perks here.     
 My own room .Sunday eggs and bacon. 
 Foodie events bring cheer. 
I live here with little cash taken. 

My own room .  Sunday eggs and bacon. 
And my mind is like  twisted tools
Live here with little cash taken. 
According to Quebec Health rules.
Form: Pantoum

Premium Member Plague Journal - April 1, 2020

This week our play at self-distancing and living amid a pandemic became real. Before the empty shelves and cancelled events were annoying but we had sufficient toilet paper to last a good while and there was Tiger King on Netflix. Then too the reduced traffic and cheap gas were unexpected bonuses although there was really no place to go.

But the news of the deaths at a nursing home in Ontario’s cottage country and the tweets this morning from people who were unable to be with loved ones as they died, and then faced with a ceremony less cremation or burial have brought the stark face of mortality too our doorsteps.

Meanwhile life goes on, it’s a beautiful sunny day outside and as I hung the laundry, grackles were busy building nests in the cedars and the first snowdrops and fall garlic were poking through the soil. The garden will need clearing this afternoon and life goes on while life goes on.

Be well and stay safe.
Form: Prose

Daughter

Such a little feisty baby
It’s a girl they say 
Pushing away her mum from the very first day
Where is my Dad from the start
Daddies girl at heart. 

Such a sweet little girl,singing dancing, laughing, jumping around
Such a joy of her sound

Growing up to be a girl 
Follow in dads shadow

Life in a whirl
Teenage years with all its demands 
Boys and work and all lives harms

Moving out to be with him
The nursing home a place of sin
My worry was for her care
To interfere or not a nightmare 

Back home to mum and dad 
No more reason to be sad

Off to Buddhism together we go
Finding our centre and mind control 
Peace in our hearts a glow
A lifetime lesson we got to know

Dad leaves and breaks your heart
We were never destined to be apart

You have your life with another love now
Off to Scotland I did allow
Broke my heart in return 
One of life’s lessons I did learn 

Married now both we are 
Distance is far to far
Never apart joined by our bond
Heart to heart, soul to soul, eternal, divine. 
Nothing can part this special bond
Father daughter, special friend
Spiritually bonded to the end.
Form: Rhyme

Premium Member Gaslit Memories

When I was younger, days moved softly,  
an endless waltz of hours beneath the cherry blossoms  
where I walked alone, convincing myself  
that solitude was sweet, that love was for the others.  

My footsteps in the fall, crisp and solitary,  
echoed through halls of laughter I dared not enter.  
So assured was I in my unworthiness,  
a specter at the feast of hearts, unseen and unseeing.  

Now, here, amid these whitewashed walls that hum  
with whispers of who should care,  
I sit in my assigned chair, watching pairs of old hands clasp,  
wondering how love sounds when it calls your name.  

They tell me stories of my past, lit by the flicker  
of doubtful memories; they paint me loved and cherished.  
I nod, wearing their fiction like a threadbare coat  
in a winter that I’ve claimed too long as mine.  

It’s easier to believe in this curated past,  
where phantom kisses mark my cheek,  
and phantoms of embraces wrap me in warmth  
I never felt—each lie a balm to the soul I doubted.  

Night falls heavy here, and in the quiet,  
I hear the young man I once was, whispering  
through the crackling static of years,  
how he wished to be proved wrong, yet never dared to ask.  

What ghosts will they say loved me,  
when I am gone, my seat left cool and empty?  
Will they speak of me as one beloved,  
or will they know the truth—that I believed in neither them nor me?  

Oh, to have lived differently, unafraid of my own heart,  
to have walked into the noise and found my reflection  
in eyes not my own, learning too late  
that I was worthy, always worthy, of the love I denied myself.

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