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
