Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine includes 3 of my nursing poems in its Spring/Summer 2023 issue. Since it is an online journal, readers can enjoy these and the other heart-felt writing by going to www.theintima.org. To find my poems specifically, click on Current Issue, then scroll down to Poetry. The poems are in alphabetic order and are titled, “Daughter Gesture,” “Drive,” and “The Softest Cloth.”
“Daughter Gesture” is about my dear friend Sally caring for her mother. “Drive” is about a caregiver for one of my patients letting him drive one final time at age 99. “The Softest Cloth,” is a tribute to my friend Sherry, the nurse who trained my in Hospice work. She was one of the kindest people I have ever known. Here is her poem:
The Softest Cloth
The day I shadowed you, learning
Home Hospice nursing, you warned me,
on the drive to his cabin, about the patient
dying of throat cancer whose disease
progressed upwards, disfiguring
his speech and features.
His door was unlocked. You entered
like a friend. Laid out supplies
as if for a morning shave.
His eyes spoke what his lips could not.
He loved you for seeing more than a wound.
I waited at the corner of his vision,
handing you irrigation solution, powders
to erase odor, a roll of the softest
packing cloth. You chatted about weather,
praised the beauty of his woodland acre
then scaled pain no number could ever
describe, increasing dosages meant
for dreaming. As goodbye, you smoothed
sheets over bones, then gently touched
his forehead, your fingers tracing shadows
of all a face can mean.