Body

Well as usual, I am just under the wire to participate in the Creative Every Day Challenge. This month the theme is Body. I had a number of ideas to play with. As a nurse, the obvious subject would be to look at illness and working to help the person cope within the realm of that challenge; especially if the illness changes one’s daily routine, health or way of being. When I first started nursing I was struck by one patient who was sitting dejectedly in a geriatric chair and tried to imagine what she was like as a young person. The outcome was a poem titled “Grains of Sand”.

Grains of Sand

O youthful beauty, do you think back on younger days in your sedated stupor?

In your gracefulness, as you languished

daring, cigarette dangling

from your fingertips

do you relive those times?

As you sit in your chair,

rasping, rumbling in your chest

now others feed and dress you

you fight for air,

living on oxygen,

yet continue to crave your nicotine.

What do you see, coke in hand?

Blonde hair flying, laughing sparkling eyes were they blue?

Dancing feet, slender, beguiling and

daring to take on the world where

did those days go?

What I decided on was a quick life-drawing sketch of the female form. I just wanted to display simple, clean lines, nothing complicated.