Out To Lunch In The Nursing Home
We went there to read poetry to the sick, the aging and the dying. When we arrived we were directed to the activities room. It was a large room with a grand piano, a few tables and many chairs. There were eight to ten old people there, residents of the home. A small frail woman all bent over sitting in her wheel chair began shouting every few stanzas Joan read of her poem. “ Help help help, help!” There was another skinny bony tired looking little woman in her wheelchair on the other end saying every five minutes or so crying out as best she could in her tired weak voice, “ Won’t somebody please help us, help us, please help us all.” Then I began reading a poem about springtime, trying to pick something cheerful and bright to lift their spirits when the old man in the wheelchair in front of me started to motion to me that he wanted something but I didn’t know what. He looked at me with his hollow eyes looking far beyond me and the room as if he was staring death in its face and it was a slow agonizing death and he appeared to be in pain with much mental anxiety with no one close by to understand what he was trying to say as he mumbled a few words in a weak whisper with much effort. None of the attendants came around and Joan and I were left in that room with those crying and moaning poor old people who were left at our mercy.
I went on reading a few more poems, hoping they would get more relaxed and calm down but it was quite obvious that they did not want to be there at all and the staff seemed to have little interest in their patients and their needs. As I continued reading Joan went over to the small frail woman on the left and knelt down beside her, taking her hand, trying to console her and comfort her. “ Go on reading. I’m going to get her a glass of water,” Joan said when I finished my second poem. Then the other woman on the right began shouting out again, “Help help help help!” Then the other woman next to the old man looked at me, her lips frantically moving, mumbling something but not saying anything that was coherent, only an expression of her painful last days in that nursing home with her mind gone and not being able to understand anything as if she was having a bad dream and couldn’t wake up.
Joan began reading again and I went out of the room down the hall to find someone on the staff to let them know that the people in the activities room were ready to leave. Where was Mary, the one who just turned one hundred last August and the staff had a big birthday party for her which Joan and I were invited to read at? She was still quite spry with a little bit of life left in her. She was hard of hearing but had a fairly good mind still. When Joan and I previously read our poems Mary often responded with, “ Well that was good. That was real good!” or she would laugh at a humorous line and when we finished she would say, “ Well those were good. They’re real good!”
I went out in the hallway to track down a staff member to tell them about the patients they left us with in the activities room and I saw Mary sitting off in a corner in a room alone and I wondered why the staff hadn’t brought her into the activities room to hear us read. It seemed as though none of the staff we knew from before were there. They must have either quit or got fired and there was this new woman with the role of activities coordinator who didn’t seem to be doing her job right. I finally managed to find a member of the staff and tell them that the people in the activities room were ready to leave. When the activities coordinator finally came into the room and all the patients were emotionally and physically exhausted, she just laughed casually as she started to push the old man in his wheelchair before she gave him a chance to lift his left leg up on the foot rest nor did she even bother to help him lift his leg up.
That was the last day Joan and I were going to read poems to the old folks in the nursing home. We began noticing things not quite right in the sad depressing institution of death where nobody understood anything. Just maybe there were a few moments of comprehension in the fading minds of those poor old suffering souls to grasp the words like flowers, sunshine, the old apple tree, love and life rising up from out of the dark dead ground.
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Heat Wave Hits Dogtown USA
I look at the clock as I climb out of a dream about cold running streams and waterfalls and cool sprays of mist hitting my face. But now I’m awake and it’s only 6:30 AM. I’m looking out my back window at the bright sun already penetrating the morning patchy clouds. If I get up now I might still catch a cool breeze. So now I’m up and step outside to feel no air moving and the spiders have woven their new webs during the heat of the night and there is not a cloud in sight anywhere. I go back inside and prepare myself to enter into the workday as the temperature rises. This is only Monday and according to the forecast it’s not going to cool down any time soon. I eat a bowl of granola with rice milk for a little nourishment though I’m not hungry and fill the gallon jug with fresh water. As for my lunch, I don’t want to stop in the heat to eat. The sooner I can get my work done the better off I’ll be. Then it will be time to go back home and lay down in the middle of the afternoon like an old Mexican taking a siesta. The difference is the Mexicans are used to the heat and I’m not even though I grew up in the Midwest where temperatures hit the 90s on an everyday average during the summer with high humidity to boot. Maybe I’ve been spoiled living out here in the Pacific Northwest where a heat wave only comes about once or twice a year. But the times are changing and the forests are raging with hellfire and smoke. The politicians all lie and hide the facts and CEOS plead the 5th Amendment and now I can't even look forward to a few days off to hike in the wilderness because the trails are all closed. The greenhouse gases are on the rise as more forests burn with not even the largest supply of manpower and tankers and planes with smokejumpers to put them out. Natures batting back and not many people are listening. No doubt G.W. will try to pass a salvage logging bill to cut down what forests still remain, calling them a fire hazard. I’m on the job and there’s a wall of blackberries growing along a south fence I have to cut back. Then there’s a corner with overgrown brush and high weeds that reaches over my head that I have to cut down also. This is yellow jacket season. I say my prayers and prepare myself for the battle. I see a few hovering about on the other end of the fence. I’m proud to be a gardener. I should have a bumper sticker that says that. I finish my work as far as I can without getting stung by the yellow jackets. They’re like terrorists and can strike without any warning and like terrorists they have a good reason to strike when their homeland is being intruded upon and exterminated as if they do not have aright to exist. I go back home and step in my hot shower I can’t adjust the regulator on to cold and then hop on my bike and head downtown and am quickly reminded I am living in dogtown, the town somewhere between a town and a city with the university and wealthy retirees from California and rich students with brand new sleek shiny cars and boom blasters raising hell and keggers on a Saturday night. But this is an alternative minded town with free thinkers and old hippies who bought property back when it was cheap and now they’ve become part of the system trying to change things for the better but always meeting the strong opposition with other plans and then comes more growth, more traffic, more people, more crime and more barking dogs. What signs of the wild do I see here now? A raccoon raising hell like the college kids in the backyard and running across the roof, a few crows scavenging for food. Then there’s all the other distractions like the screaming sirens, and SUVS chugging on diesel with the driver riding high up in the scorching heat with the air conditioner on and an American flag in the back window that says I’m Proud to Be An American. And the Country Fair was just last weekend and Ram Dass was there making one of his last appearances but I wasn’t there. I decided to avoid the mob of people, all the dust and heat and ended up saving myself a hundred bucks instead. I know we’re all going to die anyway.I have to go outside now and change the sprinkler head because that’s part of my job and agreement living here and the dogs next door start yapping at me again. This always happens when their owners are away. This gives me more of a motivation to change my living situation. I don’t want to live in dogtown anyway but I’m still here and Ram Dass says BE HERE NOW and I’m not really down on dogs, one of my girlfriends has a dog but I’m more of cat person at heart but I realize dogs have as much of right to be here as well as cats but I just hate it when they yap yap yap!
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(c) T. Avery, 2002