A little goes a long way

I have over the years come across some examples of very little making the difference between life and death. In caring for the elderly, sometimes it is food for the spirit that makes the difference. This poem instances a particular case; the improvement was spectacular.

In the Home 

Sitting quietly by her bed,

among those sobbing, groaning women.

A room claustrophobic with impending death;

her spirit withered inside her,

her mind ran away to the fifties.  

But given a bed near the window,

her mind cranked up.

It was the birds on the lawn,

the grubbing thrushes and blackbirds:

they found perches for her brain.