REFLECTIONS ON LIFE

I was talking with friends, and as so often people of my age do, we were reflecting on life.
I inherited from a stranger this framed poem that contained her reflections

THE NURSING HOME
 
Slowly and quietly a room becomes a world,
scene for the rituals and patterns of each day;
bells echo down corridors, other phone-bells ring
- people remembering.
 
Sometimes the sunlight plays upon the walls
with shafts of life - glowing and gilding
all the close-held things that still say 'you',
(not just the patient in room twenty-two).
Sometimes the nearness of essential things
speaks eloquently of how very few
one needs, to keep one's small world rolling on,
and how much time was spent safeguarding more.
 
One holds one's wealth only within one's mind,
where all the filtered hopes and joys and fears
of all past years, live on, condensed to photos on the wall,
and thoughts still safely stored in silent books –
the essence of that company of friends
discovered on the journey, always there
speaking from other times, thoughts quietly told,
whose hearts you heard, and hold.
 
And sometimes one small treasure, like a shell
caught by the passing sunlight, opens doors
and speaks with coolest clarity of outside things –
of all the hours spent wandering through sand,
and foam, and sea wind, and sea worlds –
the mystery of science and beauty fused
in everything, as in that tiny shell
lit in a flash of sun within my room,
leading me through the doors
To vast unchartered shores
 
V Geach 1992