She was a nurse
She was a beauty too
Then a car crash
Smash what will you do?
Body broken
Really paralysed
I was a nurse, now patient,
Victim too
A friend of mine
Has Alzheimers I learn
A lovely lady
A mother and a gem
She always welcomed me
A home from home
Now her mind is going
Yet not gone
Another person
In my family
Is diagnosed
Just now with MND
This cruel illness
Takes all away from you
You’re going slowly
Nothing you can do
Our life of joy
Is too a life of woes
Born to die
Is how the story goes
We care for those
Who need us in their pain
Our turn will come
This world of loss and gain
So now we come
To look upon the cross
And ask the question
Why as one of us
Christ chose to die
A death so viciously
Abandoned and alone
Upon a tree
Tell us openly
If you are the Christ!
What good is that!
I let my actions speak
Those actions mean
I face all this world’s pain
And undergo the cruelty of men
I witness in my body
To the truth
And you shall see
The triumph of the good
The Via Dolorosa
I must walk
To show you that my life
Is not just ‘talk’
And standing at the cross
Today I see
The meaning of the pain
Endured for me
You faced the evil
That this world employs
And rose again
To give us Easter joys
Our sufferings
Have many a different hue
The body yes
But mind and spirit too
Relationships are broken
Friendships are betrayed
And kindness is forgotten
And mislaid
The Stations of the Cross
Teach us so well
The way of human suffering
They tell
From judgement and betrayal
To falling on your face
The stripping and the rolling of the dice
An altar boy in Hindsford
Walking round
I wondered at this story
And its pain
But now I’m grown
I know the story well
The cross comes to us all
And comes again
So if I want to live a life
That’s true
I take the cross and follow
After you
For looking to myself
I lose it all
But losing it
I gain it after all
Brian Fahy
9 May 2021
Erris Poetry 