Dear Doris

You smile in your sleep,
delicate hands flutter by

your cheek,

You graze your own chin

tenderly.

The nurses call out your name -

You smile as sweet

and sleep on.

Your grand daughter visits,
she calls you Nan,
she tells you of her day,

she rubs cream on your hands,

She wishes you would wake
when she calls you Nan,
but you smile as sweet
and sleep on.

© Shaista Tayabali, 2011   (The Rocking Chair image by Rosalie Scanlon)

for the Call and Response prompt at dverse poets ... this poem is dedicated to a patient on the stroke ward. She was in the bed next to mine, and I wished I could have known her. But she had long left this place. Where had she gone? Where do stroke patients go? She seemed peaceful there. It seemed a shame to disturb her, but when you can see someone in physical form, they seem present, and it is so difficult to not want to communicate, to call them back, to long for a response.