Posts under ‘Poetry’

“How long has your mother had Alzheimer’s?’
“I don’t know…“ I reply,
it wasn’t like turning a corner
and there it was
but we had hints
a decade or more ago–
I remember…
–Mother forgetting to write down checks she wrote
–unpaid bills stacked with piles of junk mail in Harry and David’s Fruit of the Month Club boxes under her bed,
–prescriptions irregularly [...]

Names go
nouns
the verbal hands
with which we hold
through which we manipulate,
relationships get fuzzy
places unfamiliar
memories hide away,
fade out
fade in,
slowly
surely
slip,
hold,
then
slip again.
by Henry Walker July 5, 1999

Imagine
talking with your mother
and it’s like
she speaks a language you understand,
part of the time,
the words, the concepts, the memories
ringing true and clear
to the reality you know and (sort of) understand,
and then she speaks another language
you get the words and part of the concepts
but what’s real for her
doesn’t intersect with what you can yet know,
she’s walking [...]