Well, it’s April, hence National Poetry Month in the US, and since we are in the northern hemisphere, it is also, apparently, rain season. April showers and all that jazz. Unrelated to rain, or perhaps related but only in gloominess, today’s poem touches on dementia.
Dementia, in all its forms, is probably quite high up there on writers’ lists of fears. It’s insidious, sneaking in like a light fog getting heavier as it goes, so that before you know it, line of sight has dropped to arm’s length. It’s just as deadly as Hawk-On-The-House but less fierce, more relentless.
Hurrying, Before the Rain
Air as gray as her hair, and just as thin.
Trees resolve in the fog as she nears them.
Not pine, a name she once knew, but evergreen, here and there
amongst the black and gray… leaf-droppers, all currently bare.
Behind her, the great winch she dragged, on a cart, on the path
she felt under her slippers while counting out the stones, math
at least not failing her, though much else had, notably
memory, some sight and a host of bodily functions, and maybe,
no, certainly, the future, which steadily grew closer.
Seven stepping stones into the park she stopped, her
right palm out, left grasping the winch’s long noose.
A step to the right she found one leaner, roots
half out of the grave. Clasped the noose around the tree—
oak or ash? She didn't know, just needed to arrest its degree
of lean, so set the winch to work. The engine roared.
The spool turned, pulled, persistently warred
with the treacherous bog that had failed the lovely tree.
At max pull, she stopped the winch and counted to three,
or thought she did, then counted again before un-spooling,
un-tensioning, un-winding the leash from the trunk, un-pulling.
Then, looping the chain back to the cart, she found again
the path throughout the park. She'd lost already then
so many: friends, a husband, a few kids, well, maybe the kids
weren't lost so much as gone off her shrinking grid.
Away. Except for the one daughter not of her body
who came over and looked in, never complaining about shoddy
upkeep of her... wisteria? No, that’s a vine. She'd lost kittens
and dogs and houses, lost clothing and cars and mittens,
lost keys and the locks they went to, lost aunts that needed care
and a house that burned, and some jobs. Also gave up despair
for those trees. That yard, or park. They couldn't leave her.
Couldn't walk off and find someone better.
Probably wouldn't die in her lifetime.
Might rot, like her teeth, but in glacial time.
Or the tree-ly equivalent.
They evoked dissent.
As they leaned, might fall.
She pulled against the call
of dailiness, gravity.
It was a peach tree.
That’s it. And four,
or maybe three more,
needed a tug
and pull. Or hug
in time. She
could just see
the family
tree.
~~
So that’s a little dark, but so are the storms outside.