Thursday, November 15, 2012

. . . Nursing Home Epiphany . . .

digital art: ralph murre


Norman Rockwell’s Nursing Home Epiphany
(the painting not painted)
by Robert Nordstrom

There’s Charlie
Henry
Frank
pulled up pushed in
to the TV gates
yellow pillow-head hair
electric in the flickering light
watching Weather Channel tornadoes
race across the Midwest
.
and there’s the nurses and aides
in their blue scrubs and pink smocks
sorting pills and chores
the grandchildren nephews nieces
staring in open mouthed nonplussed
amazement at
Charlie
Henry
Frank
slumped
heads bobbing and weaving
like broken down stallions
whose races have been run

and Norman
who painted the happiness
he did not know how to live
there’s Norman
alone in the corner
lower right
partially hidden
by the fern’s green fingers
his own elongated finger raised
and pointing—
he may be pointing
we wish him to be pointing
to the narrow window
where a single amber leaf
falls through splendent light


~ first published in Miller’s Pond