There is poetry in service
There is poetry in service,
There is love in nursing care,
Tenderness tends to trump clumsy,
There’s dignity in fixing her hair.
And service is an ode to the poet
Who lives in your heart and your soul,
It’s a calling and everyone knows it,
There’s compassion in serving a soup bowl.
If ever in human endeavour
There’s a calling that makes one feel whole,
It’s helping the helpless without favour
And dignity lives deep in the soul.
Service is needed all over,
The need is urgent and great;
Not everyone’s cut out for the service,
Nor is there room left over for hate.
In all of the realms of service,
There is one constant trait always there,
And that is the love for the people
By the ones who are born to give care.
So if you are blessed to be one of them,
And you’ve given your life to service,
May your god bless you in abundance,
You’re a gift, we’re blessed that you serve us.
So the next time you need any service
In the delivery of some TLC,
Be assured that in your care giver
There is poetry in service—there be!
The service provider moves in verses
In regular up and smooth down beats,
She’s graceful poetry in motion
Even as she changes your sheets.
Sometimes she’s iambic pentameter,
Sometimes she’s a rhyming sweet verse,
She’s always open to blank stanzas,
The essence of poetry in service.
Her poetry takes you from sadness,
Massages your aches and your pains,
She brings you back to the beginning
Helps you to count up all of your gains.
Sometimes she swallows emotion
In musical counts of heart beats,
But she helps to even your meter
And get you back out to the streets.
So here’s to the poetry in service,
May there ever be those who do care—
Doctors or nurses or care givers—
They are they poets who dare.
–H. W. Bryce
