Spirituality Dementia Poems
By John Killick

GLIMPSES

to see what is beautiful
to hear what is beautiful
they don’t know what is beautiful

all these young people
good men, nice boys, fine chaps ---
they are too busy to see

it’ll be a good bit longer
before you see
what you want to see

but they don’t want to see
what in some queer way
they are anxious to see

we see it very rarely
but the difference is
we are trying to see!

(from Openings Hawker)

THE BLUE FAR YONDER

In the skies up high
with the clouds below you ---
that’s where I’d like to be.

With the birds,
the little sparrows,
but I’ll remain a man.

It’s an attraction,
it’s the spaces
that we can’t reach.

I was up there one day
and got the sensation
I didn’t want to come down.

I’d rather be
a creature of the air
than of the earth.

(from Openings Hawker)

LOOKING UP

Why cry
when you can laugh?
It doesn’t cost you anything.
You can do it all your life.
You can put it in a wee envelope in your baggage.
Or put it up on the wall
so that everyone can see it.

People think that you
need something beautiful
to make a beautiful picture.
But what you need is skill.
And the eye to see
that it is beautiful.

There’s beauty in everything
if you look for it:
the sky through the skylight,
in colours or not.
It depends on your mood.

Oh I went to look up in the sky
and saw it shining there
and said “That is Life”.
Are you going to take me
to see the sun?

(from Dementia Diary Hawker)