The lady sat asleep in a high-backed Georgian chair.
Her eyelids fluttered gently as a wisp of silver hair
Played a delicate ensemble on her cheek and on her nose;
In her dream a handsome man had given her a rose.
They were sitting on a bench in a garden full of flowers.
Had they been here just a minute? Had they been here several hours?
The lady didn’t know, but she also didn’t mind;
The birds were singing Mozart and the handsome man was kind.
He held her hand in both of his and looked into her eyes;
In the lady’s chest her heart began to flutter and to rise.
“Who are you?” she asked him with her hand upon his cheek.
“Who are you?” he seemed to answer, though he did not speak.
“It’s a funny thing, my darling, but I do not seem to know –
“All that I can say is that I don’t want you to go.
“I do not know my name; if my life is poor or grand;
“How old I am; my date of birth; so stay and hold my hand.”
“I’ll stay and hold your hand,” said the handsome man in thought,
“If you’ll let me be your teacher for the things you’ve not been taught.”
The lady smiled shyly, and giggled like a child,
As a garden breeze played symphonies of fragrance, fresh and wild.
And so the teaching started and the lady listened well.
Many of the lessons seemed to hold a magic spell:
How laughter came to Earth; how we first discovered Fire;
How we let the mind take over and the heart could not climb higher;
How fear led us wayward from the path we could have walked;
How those who’d seen it clearly had been ended if they’d talked;
Why water moves in spirals; how the oyster makes a pearl;
And as the lady listened she became a little girl.
And when the handsome man had finished, neither spoke a word.
Tweeting birds and gusts of wind were all that could be heard.
“Would you like to come,” he said, “beyond the garden now?
“Would you like to mix your knowledge with the ‘why’ and with the ‘how’?”
“Yes, please,” said the little girl. Her face was full of shine.
So, holding hands, they walked beyond the garden’s borderline.
The garden shivered pleasantly and faded from their view,
In a haze of sweet aromas and an eiderdown of dew.
The nurses at the care home did not know about this scene;
The Garden was a place where none of them had ever been.
They told the lady’s daughter that she’d gone to sleep and died,
And the daughter, now a lady, held her mother’s hand and cried.
