Lighthouse Hospice Celebrates Our Nurses

Today Lighthouse Hospice celebrated our Nurses for National Nursing Week. We have such a devoted team of nurses. Patients look to them for strength and comfort and the know how to get through the tough stuff at End-of-Life. 

Great job, Lighthouse Nurses!!! Thank you.

Here is our poem for them and the compassion they embody:

"They Watch For It In Your Eyes"
(for Lighthouse Hospice Nurses 2014)

They watch for it – 
in your eyes -

the slightest tremor
or wince of dismay.

They see only the bright
boldness that shines 
straight out from
your soulful self
holding love;

like a pool of ocean
backwater 

along a jetty.

A place for them to
play amid the roughness
of the waves that seem 
all so strong.

All around. Your 
glance gives peace.

Your eyes -

a mountain stream -

so clear from an ever
flowing spring.

Wisdom tears 
of the heart 
that slake 

both sorrows’ 
and joys’ 
ever present thirst.

* * * 

They listen for it
in the clarity 
of your message 
and the in tone
of your voice. 

Unlike others,

you are not afraid 
to speak of that which slips
away between the recesses
of the daylight of
their youth – 
those things that they 
hold onto;
a first kiss,
a child’s first steps, 
the joy that lit their eyes.

The beauty
of who they have been
is a grace for 
their own selves 
to remember -

daffodils pushing through
the dark dank layer 
of last season’s leaves. 
The rich 
aroma of hyacinth in
the early morning
mist and heavy dew
calling them to be still.

Your voice
an ever present pool
of safety; 
cool and inviting. 
Your words
laid out in such a way
to wend them through 
their end of time; 

bricks 

in patterned fashion 
through the rosemary
of the mind.

* * * 

They feel for it 
in your touch 

that feathers ever so lightly 
over the blanket of their skin; 

hanging so gingerly 
on the body of their dying. 

So paper thin and fine;

rescued 
from the tattering 
and the tears 
by the fondness 
of your soul 
for gentleness 
and comfort 

slathered
on by layer after 
layer of loving care.

The space you tend
with them is worthy
of the dying of a Royal. 

Laurel draped upon their
every act, and thought, and word
and whim.

You gesture them on
and tell them
how it is to be
for them as they
move, so elegantly through
the heaviness,

so slowly toward 
the dimming of the light.

They watch for it – 
in your eyes -

the slightest tremor
or wince of dismay.

They see only the bright
boldness that shines 
straight out from
your soulful self
holding love;

like a pool of ocean
backwater 

along a jetty.

A place for them to
play amid the roughness
of the waves that seem 
all so strong.

All around. Your 
glance gives peace.

Your eyes -

a mountain stream -

so clear from an ever
flowing spring.

Wisdom tears 
of the heart 
that slake 

both sorrows’ 
and joys’ 
ever present thirst.