Poetry sites are bookmarked on my computer and the first thing I do when I wake up is go from one to the other, reading poems. Four per morning, sometimes more. I hardly ever read any poems I like. Why do you read poems you don’t like? asks the man who knows me best, watching me sigh and roll my eyes. Because I have to read a ton of poems I don’t like in order to find one I do like, which is the truth. Maybe one out of a hundred poems will seize me. Even so, one out of a hundred poems adds up. They add up and up and up, to a beautiful tumble of beautiful poems I will keep reading forever. You know what else adds up? Cruel statements add up, and vicious diatribes add up, and chants of lock her up add up, and rallies of falsehoods and hatred add up. But good deeds add up too, damn it, and so do people who fill a hollow no one else can fill, as in this beautiful poem below. Hail to the unsung and underpaid caregivers, for they are the ones who mend the wounds, smooth the sheets, clean the vomit of humanity from the streets and from our souls.

People Who Take Care

     – Nancy Henry

People who take care of people

Get paid less than anybody

people who take care of people

are not worth much

except to people who are

sick, old, helpless, and poor

people who take care of people

are not important to most other people

are not respected by many other people

come and go without much fuss

unless they don’t show up

when needed

people who make more money

tell them what to do

never get shit on their hands

never mop vomit or wipe tears

don’t stand in danger

of having plates thrown at them

sharing every cold

observing agonies

they cannot tell at home

people who take care of people

have a secret

that sees them through the double shift

that moves with them from room to room

that keeps them on the floor

sometimes they fill a hollow

no one else can fill

sometimes through the shit

and blood and tears

they go to a beautiful place, somewhere

those clean important people

have never been.

For more information on Nancy Henry, please click here.