Thread by @MooseAllain

Let me tell you something nice. My dad is in his 80s and in a care home, greatly hampered by Parkinsons. I go to visit him every couple of weeks, fill him in on what’s happening in our lives. Conversation tends to run dry towards the end of an hour.

We sit and watch the birds on the feeder outside his room. His immobility means that his life has shut down to more or less the four walls. A few weeks ago one of the carers organised a poetry session. A handful of residents got together to read out poems.

Many of the people who live there have dementia, so a couple of them dozed through it, but Dad really enjoyed it anyway. He was telling me about it today, it's been a few weeks, and we agreed he should ask for her to do it again. We got around to discussing poetry.

He told me about a poem that his late brother John had lampooned. He can still recite it "Jenny beat me…". I can't remember the rest, but it's about computer chess match. He told me that he'd read out the original 'Jenny Kiss'd Me' (Leigh Hunt) to the group and it fell flat.

I wasn't familiar with the poem so I googled it and read it out. It's incredibly poignant to read to an old man whose life has closed in on him. It's here poetryfoundation.org/poems/50495/je…

We went on to read and discuss a couple of other poems - The Battle Hymn of the Republic and Abou Ben Adhem. Dad's a very devout Catholic (I'm an atheist), so it was great to be able to approach the subject of God on neutral territory, so to speak.

I feel slightly guilty about tweeting about him as he's a very private man, but I wanted to share something happy with you, and maybe some of you might find it helpful if you have an elderly relative or someone who's in a similar position.

So it was great to see Dad animated, brought out of himself by the poetry and I felt we have a way into conversation now that's been lacking for ages. And we can still sit and watch the birds while we read to each other.