When this posts in a week, the holiday
will be upon me. Now I’m nearly done
with necessary shopping, and the way
soon clears to walk beneath a winter sun,
to train and trolley west, to eat and play
with buddies, sharing sweets and puzzle fun.
Within a week I’ll reap gay attitudes,
but first I’m sending money cards and foods.
December chill is on us. It won’t freeze,
but humid multiplies effect and will
impose on roofless folk severities:
December chill.
We’re known for mild weather here but still,
the walk to BART in 48 degrees
is hard to handle even in down fill.
I take the cold on cheeks and ears and knees,
and lust for home. It won’t be long until,
appreciating inside, this one flees
December chill.
Suggesting how to yodel, in a dream,
the older woman said, “just watch my chest.”
It sunk a bit as she let fly a stream
of alternating syllables. I guessed
I heard – for sleep is subtle and no theme
emerged as I awoke from stuttered rest.
But that is typical in bed for me,
at night at least, at five and seventy.
Are we at heart our personalities?
Do feelings need from me? Synapses reel…
Considering dementia’s mysteries,
I wonder what remains when neurons seal
the memory, or how some therapies
sequester our emotions and appeal
to us to give them what we think they ask.
Can I, bifurcated, address the task?
If he’s okay, I’ll table my concern.
I had a vision only yesterday
of child pain, but I’ll no longer churn
if he’s okay.
He’s 8. I well remember unkind play
around that age – cruel taunts and games that spurn.
Protecting parents then, I didn’t say.
I know you ask upon his day’s return,
but do you plumb creatively, the way
you must to prompt response? I want to learn
if he’s okay.
Of what she needs I waiting overhear –
a walker with a seat. Then she divides
her Reese’s Pieces with employees near,
while sharing news collected from her rides.
She parks her chair on carpet, and it’s clear
she likes to talk. Her presence here provides
light entertainment. Now I leave to chat
with someone medical.
And that is that.
Perhaps nobody wants to hear me pan
a mediocre book, or to attend
her criticizing. That’s in no one’s plan,
but we’re together now, and we can lend
each other ears. Six days we get to spend
some quarter hours in our room, the car,
or walking, breathing in and out a blend
of love and wry complaint. That’s how we are.
We’ll touch down after 50 minutes more,
but it will take me time and steps apace
before I cross the threshold of my door
to see in my own mirror’s glass my face.
And though I’ll savor home’s beloved space,
I’ll have to rise and leave again tomorrow.
Until I wake on Thursday in my place,
my time is less for me to own than borrow.
Five hundred words or twenty minutes spent,
whichever limit is acquired first,
is all I plan to ask. That’s an extent
attainable, for even with no burst
of brilliance, I’ll transfer the tales I meant,
by posing prose in paragraphs unversed.
In sixty days or so from now, I’ll see
a draft produced from continuity.
I wondered what to pray about, last night,
within a gathering of mostly old
as I, and meditating by the light
electrically provided. In that fold
of sanctuary, one was uncontrolled
and inarticulate, abruptly loud.
That clap of voice inspired me to hold
all judgment down amid a gentle crowd.
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