Memory Care

- for Anita

I heard some of you got your families living in cages tall and cold and some just stay there and dust away past the age of old. - Jimi Hendrix "Up From the Skies" (1968)

age breaks the cage
the canary
lingers

the boiled egg
of her mind cracks
open

day after
yellowed day
nothing stays

each morning she
rises to a
fresh world

smiles as she waits
for the shutter
to snap

plays out childhood
from vague finish
to start

she rides the glass slide
through the fogged
mirror

March Triptych

God designed the month of March to show people who don't drink what a hangover feels like. -- Garrison Keillor (2010)

Eye

Dream hands
claw the shift
ing field
dig in

That which is
can be known
without open
ing the eye

Reach

My hands scoop
to my face clear water
rolls through fingers
down over itself

I catch color
in the formless
splashes, each
drop topaz

I always reach
for what
cannot
be held

This day like
no other
this moment gone
as I grasp it

Hold

A single crust
of snow left over
from October
refuses to melt

I am amazed
how the earth
swells like
a black sponge

Opens at
thaw's edge
to take
more in

There is
reason
to hold
on

To hold what
we may
as close as
we can

Nothing
resists this
yearning to be
made new

In this
we are
all the
same

Even after
long winter
life stirs
in the last ice

After being told I look good for 67 (on my 57th birthday)

damn fluorescent light
carpet seam carpet
gray on grey
air machines hum
the building thinks it is alive
damn fluorescent light
bright eyes open

to a dimming world
veins ridge skin
it takes longer to chew
almost everything
creaks yet the mind
grows younger
the heart more childlike
the longer we hang on

our engines slow
as the scenery
speeds by
there are no breaks
aging is a paradox
a wind bitten rag
dancing on a stick

the grim reaper
telling jokes
window glare window
knock knock
no one is there
everyone is moving
damn fluorescent light