Ogden, Utah: The Nursing Home

Your son and daughter walk softly and speak in reassuring tones, 
let a nurse, a stranger push your wheelchair.

You and they try not to stare at your future companions, 
most in chairs, wheels locked, as if staking claim to a new piece of land.
 
The once steadfast countenances of these elderly born 
of pioneer stock now hold lost expressions.  

This is not home, but a foreign land, harsh and unforgiving. 
What has happened to their promised land? 

As they watch your caravan make its way to Room 113,
they offer no words of welcome, or words of caution. 

Do they think of their own arrival, days, weeks, months ago?
Or are they lost in the unmapped territory of their minds? 

In your private room, you laugh and joke. The intake specialist
takes down contact information and answers questions with humor. 

Younger than your children, he thinks he knows how hard life can be. 
He is mistaken.   

As you sign each of the multiple forms he hands you, 
your son remarks that each signature is becoming more legible.

The news does not bring you cheer. 
Where is home? This is the place people go to die. 

Night falls, pain increases.
Your dinner tray is returned to the kitchen untouched. 

You struggle to remain awake. Your son massages your legs. 
Your daughter writes your name in clothing.

Like all Utahns, you are proud of your pioneer roots, 
the stories of your ancestors moving east to west.

How they struggled in the cold, harsh winter,
many cherished possessions abandoned on the trail.

A beloved horse put down. A broken wheel mended 
and re-mended, until it eventually gave out.





Robin Michel (she, her, hers) was born in Utah and moved to California at the age of seventeen. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Boudin, Cloudbank, Gordon Square Review, The MacGuffin, Naugatuck River Review, Prime Number and elsewhere. She is the author of Beneath a Strawberry Night Sky (Raven & Wren Press, 2023) and Things Will Be Better in Bountiful (Comstock Review, 2024). She currently lives, writes, and resists in San Francisco.