Caregivers

                       

Efficient, compassionate, loving,
they go about their rounds
or to their classrooms to teach.
They impart some of themselves
into every life they encounter.
Underpaid, or not paid at all,
they work to exhaustion.

                   

They give from their hearts
to make life livable for others.
They offer hope to the hopeless,
strength and endurance to the weak
compassion to the sick and infirm,
comfort where comfort is needed.

                   

These deeds go mostly unrecognized.
Caregivers generally feel uncomfortable
with praise or even acknowledgment.
They are angels stationed on earth.
On their watch, they make the unbearable
bearable by helping, holding a hand, listening.

                   

At times a thankless vocation
serving the ill, the maimed, the beaten,
those who can find no understanding
even within themselves.
They provide aid to desperate lost souls,
some addicted, afflicted or unstable,
some who have been incarcerated.

                   

I'm sure caregivers feel the love
and appreciation of some of those
whom they have helped;
those who have been given a new life,
who have been rescued from themselves.
In heaven, there is a special place
for these earthly angels of mercy.

                   

I thank you, with all that is in me,
for the outstretched hand
offered when I was drowning,
when I was lost in the fog
of incomprehension and confusion.
I have been rescued and returned
to safety, security and reality.
You have my undying gratitude.