c.n.a. sonnet (2)
About six months ago I began writing a series of sonnets concerning my life as a certified nurse aide (C.N.A.). It's a curiously important, hight-stress, low-paid job; taking care of the elderly and dying. It is also curious how much we fear the end of life in our culture. We have no stories, no myths, no collected ideas concerning death. The few people who are drawn to take care of the dying go, for the most part, ignored, unnoticed, neglected. Perhaps this will change as more and more Baby Boomers advance into old age. Perhaps. Perhaps our poets will then start to sing about this great mystery all of us must face. Perhaps. If you know a nurse aide yourself, someone who takes care of your mother or father, your grandmother or grandfather, who does the hard work of helping them face death with dignity, tell them they're doing a good job. I bet you that will be the first compliment they've heard all week.
Reprise as if there was enough caffeine
to fuel this – enough to touch me – enough;
I shall not be touched. I touch. The unclean
are made clean. Smooth out bed linen, the rough
bits. The rough bits I drink down. Gruff clods, gruff
flecks in my coffee. Obscene how they die
on me; a pause and they're gone. All this stuff,
stuff and nonsense. Except we dignify
it all by remembering. We deny
so much, our stories empty when that light
flickers, all this fading. Gruff and bone-dry
I too disappear. Simply. Who can fight
this? Who won't finally rise, pause, blow away?
Like silt, paper. Like blood earth. Like baked clay.