Dementia

Poem dedicated to my dad.

 

 

Dementia

 

Phone call from Dad, twilight, Provo Municipal Airport:

Allegiant Airliners taxiing, big and lumbering,

Bumble on the tarmac, aimless jumbos.

We talk words that will dissolve in your mind

In a moment, like Alka-Seltzer,

Plop, plop, fizz, fizz!

No relief, and never to be recalled.

This conversation, repeats like thousands of other heart-crushing ones,

Over the decades, the unfulfilled promises, the yearning,

The years in pains-taking therapy re-constructing our family of two salvaged

From five, recalled in flashes now, like semaphore,

over the distance of thousands of miles,

The frost-covered mountains of healing between.

All this is freighted in small snippets of thought.

What was that?  Maybe?  You say, perhaps you’ll fly me to Florida.

This dialogue breaks up like so many,

Hid ephemeral oaths misting away

Like an eternally forgotten memory.

Dad, I hear your voice so often these days, real time and echoed in sleep,

But I fear I will never lay eyes on you again

Until Heaven’s Celestial Kingdom.

Author's Note

look at the heart of the poem, and the emotions at play