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Assisted Living
by Bruce W NiedtIts for the best, her daughter said,
pushing the pen into her hand.
Now sixty years of home are left behind,
nothing inside but wallpaper and echoes.
She watched them when they moved it all out
the portraits, the sofa,
her husbands secretary desk,
where he kept his accounts for forty years;
her sewing machine, the patterns
that were never lifted from paper.
In the backyard plot, gone to seed,
the garden he prized so much,
Queen Annes lace encroaches
where tomatoes used to be.
These new people, she thinks,
couldnt turn the dirt to save their lives.
As the lawyer packets the papers,
her daughter says, Ill take care of you now.
Youll have your very own room.
As if that were any consolation.
Now they are airborne, the plane banking south.
She looks down, sees a rectangular field,
then a gray scarf of clouds,
then a dozen rectangular fields. 06/06/2003 Author's Note: Honorable Mention, The College of New Jersey 23rd Annual Writers Conference, March 2004. First published in Clark Street Review, 2005.
Posted on 06/07/2003
Copyright © 2025 Bruce W Niedt
| Member Comments on this Poem |
| Posted by Agnes Eva on 06/07/03 at 05:56 PM almost heading for heaven. i don't know how you manage to capture/tie-up the emotion of the scene in your last stanza so well, with that almost haiku-like progression of familiar images we've all seen from airplane. perhaps it's the geometrical coldness of it that saddens, being so metaphorically close to the change in this woman's life... well done |
| Posted by Chris Sorrenti on 06/12/03 at 01:13 PM An unavoidable, necessary fact of life for all of us at some point in our Earthly journey. Well expressed Bruce. |
| Posted by Mara Meade on 06/12/03 at 07:46 PM Poignant, Bruce... reminds me of when we moved my grandparents into an apartment complex so they could be closer to us... watching them leave their farm was one of the hardest things I've ever done, next to watching my Grandmother cry. |
| Posted by Susan Q Tomas on 06/13/03 at 12:39 AM The rectangles make me think of the many plots of land we occupy now, from the air look like the grave sites, the many plots of land we will occupy someday. Old age and nursing homes. This is definitely part of life, but most people don't realize it. |
| Posted by John Ilotan on 06/13/03 at 03:24 PM A poignant narrative. Your words are beautifully descriptive and thought provoking. Excellent work. |
| Posted by Beth K Hannah on 06/14/03 at 04:15 AM poignant. also, very moving. |
| Posted by Quentin S Clingerman on 06/14/03 at 12:41 PM Poignant but as some one said a fact of life. You've described with such sympathy the travail of the mother and daughter as well. An increasingly timely poem. (My Sunday School Teacher recently went into a Retirement Home (beautiful one). She is delighted with it. The care of a single family house or apartment becomes just too much!) |
| Posted by Maureen Glaude on 10/16/03 at 06:12 PM such touch issues we never like to have to face. Beautifully depicted, Bruce. |
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