Twenty prose poems

by a dementia victim’s wife

I wrote my first prose-poem not long after I joined a support group for caregivers. At the first meeting I attended, a wife, sobbing, talked about her pain at moving her demented husband (who had reached the wheelchair stage) into a care facility. She did not return to the support group, but her honest anguish moved me profoundly. Her crazy pain later saved my sanity—it strengthened and comforted me. We dementia partners grieve differently and rarely openly.

I hope that sharing these poems may help other caregivers feel less alone, alarmed, ashamed. And other wives and husbands less isolated and insane.

A great many people have walked this way.  It is a marathon, not a sprint.

 

 

 

Foreword

The man I love is sitting quietly

in a lifeboat drifting away from me.

Handsome, lovely eyes wistful,

he seems at peace.

 

I am alone, flailing, lost

in the midst of icy waves,

feeling my heart freeze

as we part

 

 

 

Mortality

I took the dog for her ablutions late last night.

Like her, I raised my head and smelled the air–

salt mist as light as unshed tears.

The setting moon was glowing through a broken

cloud and showing opalescent beams,

its white transformed into a giant pearl.

The sea made lengthy shushing sounds out on the sand.

I was at peace and grateful that I live upon this bit of land.

It has become the center of my universe.

Two angled long and heavy wings stroked through the air,

A huntress owl: she shrieks exalting in her kill.

I recollect the weight of my mortality.

My body with its aches, and seeps, and ails will never leap

to feel its joy again. My death postponed is gift enough.

Yet still I mourn for what I once was given.

The dog, now through with checking what’s inside her yard,

goes smartly up the stairs, into the house and sleeps.

I come in and lie in bed.

2004

 

Diagnosis

My husband tries to comfort me:

“No one can choose his death, and

this disease is not the worst.

It does not hurt. What is, is.’

I have gone mute.

My hand and heart cannot

console or fix a bit of it.

Our ending is announced.

We lie beneath our lovely new duvet.

My heart explodes with pain, with rage.

His brain is tangled, filled with sludge?

My shining miracle with crooked tooth

that let me dare to love, whose thought

went vaulting, wide and free—he’s gone?

 

BREAK THE WINDOWS OF THIS HOUSE.

PULL DOWN THE RIDGEPOLE.

LET HOWLING WINDS BLOW THROUGH THESE DOORS.

BURN. THIS. HOUSE. DOWN.

April 2005

 

In Praise of Winter Colors

Praise God for making months of wind and cold, and seas of slate,

and waves that pull their scarves behind,

and for fierce walls that meet to throw

a riptide gout of brightest water up,

disintegrating, sparkling, gone.

Praise God for passing glories.

 

Praise God that he has planted me beside this violent, raging sea,

beside a creek become a plain of sand full of gull bones,

whose owners skimming had no thought

of wave-broke wings. Oblivious,

once soaring, free, now dust.

Praise God for life, for death.

 

Praise God for gifts of grace, for love that cherishes,

for children who survive their houses’ fall, for barren lives

refreshed by gentleness to bloom and bear good fruit.

Praise God for joyful marriage-beds.

Praise Him for covenants, for hope.

 

You, Lord, provide and take away. I bless your name. Your mercies

followed me through all my days. Do not withdraw

from my heart now. The shadows swallow

all my sight. Remove my rage at death

that, creeping, first steals mind.

 

My heart bangs. I cannot breathe. I choke upon my tears.

Be with me, Lord, in these hard years. Help me to love

each day the warmth of his sweet flesh,

and grant me courage, calm,

to match his own.

2006
Memory

The life we lose through forgetfulness resembles

The earth that sticks to the sides of plowshares

And the eggs the hen has abandoned in the woods.

Robert Bly

          Courting Forgetfulness

I am hunting for my eggs, courting my memories now,

the remainders, meaningful to no one else.

They constitute my life, and I’ve been careless:

The difference in our thumbnails, yours so very large

the thatch you sport on arms and fingers but not toes

the weight of your hand now at rest in mine.

 

Your round eyes–hazel as you say–

with edges so deep blue that it was years before

I was convinced. Such lovely eyes.

 

Your sense of humor always wry, somewhat

slant-wise, a punny way of looking at the world.

It is the last to go.

 

The twenty times a day you said:

you are the best thing that happened in my life.

(And me reversing that. It’s my own truth.)

 

How waking up I found each day a mug of coffee

at my bedside and you, still damp from showering,

in the space I made for you

 

How much it’s been your joy to feed me,

fuel me, care for me in all ways, on all days.

I never made a meal you didn’t like.

 

How you remember garbage night,

show patience to hostility, comfort,

never criticize, smile at me with love.

 

How sad the dishes are now kept where

you can’t find them, that your legs won’t

carry you downstairs, your beautiful strong legs.

 

These days are like the things

we put in the garage,

too good to throw away

but soiled.

 

My love, my love, I’m losing you.

Our bed is shaking all night long—

your body jolts at losing you.

My heart is shaking, jolting too.

2008

 

untitled

You are still present.

I hear your jokes, your worrying

that your child’s not home.

 

You want to help with errands.

You tell me that you love me, that

I am a saint, I do too much.

 

But you no longer glory

in the waves, no longer feel their push

and power in your veins.

 

And when at night I’m cold from

taking out the dog, your body can no longer

make a spoon for me.

 

Instead you lay your hand

upon my arm and with your clumsy fingers

find a place

 

that is not smooth

and pick at it. That hurts,

but not as much.

2008

 

Ashes

The house has burned down.

I walk barefoot on the cinders.

My soul has fled the land.

 

The sparkling wave

is wrecked upon small

grains of rock.

 

I had my own small rock.

It was your first love gift.

We understood its now.

 

What magic then.

My body whirled

in your great field of love.

 

That now is ended.

Not to be fixed.

Age comes with ashes.

2009

 

Respite: Time Apart

Tired.

Used up.

Sick.

Impatient.

Cruel.

Demeaning.

 

I have forgotten who you are

how much we loved

who I am.

 

Dear God, how much misery?

 

And now I hurt you more,

my sweet innocent who does not understand

why he cannot stay home with me and pet the dog.

 

The pain,

the hopelessness

have shattered me.

 

What kind of God would take away a mind

in tiny pieces?

Leave the owner struggling to walk,

baffled that his body doesn’t work?

 

Our lonely aching has no cure.

 

May 2009

The far shore

My heart is numb.

It is a dead thing

a stiff brown lump.

 

My eyes are dry.

Their tears have fled.

I can no longer call them up.

 

Love is not reigning

over me for I

inhabit no man’s land.

 

Even I cannot find me.

 

And who is this who cannot dress himself?

Who pees into his paper pants?

Whose fingers stiffly fumble at the sheet?

 

I do not know his name.

He shares my space.

He is a dumb numb thing like me.

 

Still bulky in our bed, he‘s with me yet.

A glass half full.

A death just half completed.

2009
Respite Care at VA

And now I am hiding from you.

I know you suffer.

I feel you shake.

My heart’s a stone.

 

I am worn away. In truth

I am beyond breath.

My flesh has trumped

my spirit, sent it away

 

just as St. Paul said it could.

I am too dulled to care.

I’m gone. You’re gone.

I feel not much at all.

November 2009

 

This Long Good-bye

This long good-bye goes on.

Life happens. Life is good.

Death happens. Death is good.

 

The maiden Sibyl, Ovid says,

adored her life. She struck

a deal with god to live

a thousand years.

 

Given this long life

her body shriveled

to a voice kept in a cage.

Distasteful. Children jeered.

 

Sibyl for long centuries

Contemplated death—

Embraced it at the end with

lover’s arms. Instruction this.

2010

 

 

Despair

In the beginning,

we have the comfort

of sweet flesh.

 

We god-imposters

know what ought to be

and how to fix it.

 

In the end

we know impotence, emptiness.

We are silent, we are lost.

 

Then does God speak?

To us? Or only

to the universe?

2010

 

Grace Moment

Let me write it down, dear, before

the ending comes and your hand touches me no more,

neither twitching, nor obsessively stroking

a small imperfection as if to fix it,

nor with a clumsy searching so different from your first embrace.

 

Let me write about the beauty

of your hand taking mine, which I felt again tonight,

write it quickly down before my sense-based memory fails

and I lose you beyond death:

Your soft, thick, kind hand folding around my fingers makes me feel

delicate and fragile, like a maiden or a princess from a fairy tale.

I am so beautiful and safe.

Your hand turns me miraculously back in time, or out of it,

and I am washed clean by your great love.

 

You, perfect lover, withhold only judgment.

You, my heart’s heart, with your round long-tipped hairy strong firm

fingers that always, always spoke of love–

to feel your hand’s embrace, it’s that. It’s that I want.

 

Oh my love. How can I write it down.

2010

 

 

 

Defeat

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices.

            Robert Hayden

Those Winter Sundays

 

 

I want to be the woman

that you’ve loved so well.

You were so proud of me:

It was a life-defining gift

 

back in the glory days.

This current scene of carnage eats my soul.

I can see you trapped inside your loss:

I hate it that I am so weak.

 

You poured your power

into mastery, your passion forged precision.

Discipline shaped your soul’s beauty.

Even your ruins are noble.

 

I’m none of that.

Patience is not my virtue.

I am not strong.

I cannot keep the measured life.

 

Forgive me, oh forgive me.

October 2010

 

 

After ‘Placement’

in a room filled

with the silence of absence

a woman plays solitaire on

a computer

it makes no sound

she does not talk

even to herself

October 2010

 

 

Folie ‘a deux

That first night was the miracle.

The scales fell off my eyes.

It was your passion

and the rigor of your honor made it so.

 

Months passed. I rethought

what I once knew. And then

I came to you

as to a home I’d dreamed of.

 

We are an old story–

a second chance, Boaz and Ruth–

written new. All of us

attracted, strange and upside

 

down with an

intensity that made

us crazy

that leaves us crazy still.

 

Surprise! I’m very ill, the abyss so close

I can see into it. My body’s

honoring requests I sent.

 

This separation rips the heart from me.

The boundaries are marked out:

Our bodies die apart.

 

In my mind (though not in yours)

most of me is always

next to you.

October 23, 2012

 

 

The dimensions of iron

‘. . . seen through the eyes of surfacing fish’

Al Young

               Geography of the Near Past

 

Along with space and time

the quanta of an iron atom

have fourteen more dimensions

in God’s mysterious universe.

 

A few of those dimensions may

be relevant to you now

in your eternal present,

your black hole of mind.

 

Somewhere among dimensions

unseen and unimaginable

I wander seeking you.

Vibrations make my day if I

 

pass by in close proximity.

Too many dimensions,

too much ambiguity,

an end to any sense that

 

I can muster for our world.

Your travels have overwhelmed us.

Even our common language is lost in space:

an unexpected ending to our story.

 

But I still love to sit here

with a part of you. Second time

round or eighteenth, you

remain the center of my universe.

2013
Gratitude    

your love, the many years

your handsome body slept beside me,

manly and so comforting.

 

your spirit, calm and thoughtful,

patient and forgiving,

you filling in my blanks.

 

your wisdom knowing that

we fit, the blessing

that you found me.

 

your special smell–the clean

soft, needy, male scent–

I hold it in my heart

 

your decency, reserve,

your brilliant mind that

sees and speaks so honestly

 

the energy you hold, the curiosity,

the mischief that you make,

the trueness of your soul.

 

if I had had you only for a moment’s

blink, it would be joy enough

for an eternity.

October 23, 2013

 

 

Proof

‘We are held

as in a carton

if someone

loves us.’

Kay Ryan

                 Eggs

 

 

I was not familiar

with support

outside.

I must have had

some. I

survived.

 

When then in

mid-life I came

into such a

state of joy

as if I, newly hatched

From shell, had

 

first seen sun,

known space—

I did not understand

it was your love

that gave

it all to me.

 

Now I know.

2014
God’s Confetti

 

“Look at that cloud of seagulls!” I exclaim.

“God’s confetti,” you reply.

 

I savor that day:

 

We sit at breakfast together

Watching the sun flash

on hundreds of wings

rising rank after rank

in a swirl that only God could

have choreographed.

 

Winter mornings

the air is so condensed

it makes a prism

for all the colors in the world,

magnifies them as it does all joys.

We walk and talk

and whoop with laughter.

 

 

You remain, in this our forty-fourth year, still

The noblest man I have ever met.

My heart is swollen with our love.

But you are gone inside your exile.

 

I miss the God you brought me.

 

The green flash last night

gleamed so long I almost

heard your voice.

October 23, 2014