Can you see the real me?
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What do you see nurses?
What are you thinking
A crabby old man,
Uncertain of habit,
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What do you see?
when you're looking at me?
who is not very wise,
with faraway eyes?
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Who dribbles his food,
When you say in a loud voice,
Who seems not to notice
And forever is losing
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and makes no reply.
'I do wish you'd try!'
the things that you do.
a sock or shoe?
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Who, resisting or not,
With bathing and feeding
Is that what you're thinking?
Then open your eyes, nurse:
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lets you do as you will,
the long day to fill?
Is that what you see?
you're not looking at me.
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I'll tell you who I am,
As I do at your bidding,
I'm a small child of Ten,
Brothers and sisters
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as I sit here so still,
as I eat at your will.
with a father and mother,
who love one another.
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A young boy of Sixteen,
Dreaming that soon now
A groom soon at Twenty,
Remembering, the vows
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with wings on his feet.
a lover he'll meet.
my heart gives a leap.
that I promised to keep.
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At Twenty-Five, now
Who need me to guide,
A man of Thirty,
Bound to each other
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I have young of my own.
and a secure happy home.
my young now grown fast,
with ties that should last.
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At Forty, my young sons
But my woman's beside me
At Fifty, once more,
Again, we know children;
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have grown and are gone,
to see I don't mourn.
babies play 'round my knee,
my loved one and me.
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Dark days are upon me:
I look at the future,
For my young are all rearing
And I think of the years
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my wife is now dead.
and shudder with dread.
young of their own.
and the love that I've known.
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I'm now an old man
Tis jest to make old age
The body, it crumbles;
There is now a stone
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and nature is cruel.
look like a fool.
grace and vigor, depart.
where I once had a heart.
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But inside this old carcass,
And now and again
I remember the joys;
And I'm loving and living
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a young guy still dwells,
my battered heart swells.
I remember the pain.
life over again.
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I think of the years, all too few:
And accept the stark fact
So open your eyes, people;
Not a crabby old man;
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gone too fast.
that nothing can last.
open and see.
Look closer . . . see ME!!
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When an old man died in the geriatric ward of a nursing home in North Platte , Nebraska , it was believed that he had nothing left of any value.
Later, when the nurses were going through his meager possessions, they found this poem. Its quality and content so impressed the staff that copies were made and distributed to every nurse in the hospital. One nurse took her copy to Missouri .
The old man's sole bequest to posterity has since appeared in the Christmas edition of the News Magazine of the St. Louis Association for Mental Health. A slide presentation has also been made based on his simple, but eloquent, poem.
And this little old man, with nothing left to give to the world, is now the author of this 'anonymous' poem winging across the Internet.
Quadropheneia...
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My Favorite group.