"Smoke" by Jeanne Bryner
Assessment
By Jeanne Bryner
If you see wrist scars
kneel down,
check both ankles
offer to wash her feet.
From: "Smoke" by Jeanne Bryner
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I don't recall how I stumbled upon this book of poetry, but I love every poem in it. Ms. Bryner is a Registered Nurse and an award-winning poet/writer. Her poetry is awesome, skillfully bringing the love, care, frustrations and deep devotion of her vocation to the craft of poetry. I have 5 nurses in my family and my husband is a retired nurse. They (along with school teachers) are truly the neglected, under-paid, under-appeciated heroes of our world.
Now is the time to be mute.
I will sit beside you without speaking.
I will cushion your bones in silence.
I will put my ear to your ear
and wait to hear a wave's scant echo
rippling from the distant rim. ~Alice Cone, "A Time to be Mute
Hug and thank a nurse next time you encounter them (after the flu season is over).
xo,
Marion
"Nursing is an art: and if it is to be made an art, it requires an exclusive devotion as hard a preparation, as any painter's or sculptor's work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God's spirit? It is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts." ~Florence Nightingale
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Always thank your nurse,
Sometimes the only one between you and a hearse.
~Carrie Latet
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6 comments:
All true! It's the nurses that hand out compassion, and often explanation when you are confused and concerned.
((Hugs))
How did I not know Ray was a retired nurse?? My older daughter is a nurse. I have all the respect in the world for them!
i'm sure those special nurses i've encountered think i'm just shy of bonkers. the nurse who helped me deliver my first, i wrote her a long letter of thanks and mailed it to her. every other after that i all but kissed, but how to say thank you enough? it's difficult and yet we try.
xo
erin
I like nurses. Female ones. xo
Rev MLK must have had nurses in mind when he wrote:
"All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence."
quid
I'll have so show this one to Peggy, who is looking forward to retiring from nursing in another 17 months. It's not what it used to be, she says, and I'm sure she's right about the changes in working conditions all being for the worse.
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