This, Too, Is Holy

To unroll the toilet tissue and wipe

The wet of the elderly resident

In Room 211; to anoint the scaly

Permanent bedsores of the patient almost

Past pain and its palliatives; to be sent

To the call-light of the dementia case,

Or the accident victim of twenty

Now no longer respondent to scan; to bend

To the whispered request for a hand

To grasp as the baby is born;

To wash the feet that might have been

His, and not leave them unblessed.

NANCY G. WESTERFIELD*

* Nancy G. Westerfield was Nebraska's first National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Poetiy. She is also a journalist and writer of short stories.

Copyright Anglican Theological Review, Inc. Summer 2004
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