What I Know About Alzheimer's

[Truerenigma]

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What I Know About Alzheimer’s

i. After Death

I’ve always wondered
if father dreamed, did he remember
his own name

He’s buried now with a whirligig
beside his plot, a headstone etched
with his name and dates so others
will remember him, even if he couldn’t

His last years were beach sand,
a gift to be blown away; Alzheimer’s
was how his distance widened,
how all his names moved
farther and farther away

Sometimes, when I visited, I wondered
whether he was ashamed he could dream
at all.

ii. Before Death

His hands hold the new electric razor;
they can no longer be trusted
to the straight edge. He reminds me oddly
of an older model of a father: boned,
collapsible, something to be forgotten
in a deep closet. Pocked skin, his veneer
of fatigue; arms as if from a child’s drawing.

He asks me to how to use it and puts it to his face,
as if wanting to scrape thin ice on a winter windshield.

No, here, Dad. Let me show you.

He watches in the mirror as I guide his finger
to the on/off switch, says with a cold-fact delivery,

I used to do this kind of stuff for you.

His dark eyes are hungry to remember; I feel my finger
on his finger, feel the calluses, his skin flaking into dust.

Yes, you did. Many times.

iii. Death Night

Father never took slow showers,
nor did I ever ask him about his dreams

over coffee or between bites of corn flakes
or raison toast with Skippy peanut butter.

He never went religious, not even after Lisa;
I often fell asleep with his Twin Cities voice

on the radio, statically, like bags of salt,
selling London Luggage leather hand bags

or used cars from towns named Cadott
or Chippewa Falls, cities that have supplied

the world with cozy children. There is no way
back from there; even when I used to wake

with him on the bed’s edge, I considered him
a genius in our city by the river near the trees.

I have to say that I very much like #3. I find it delicate and moving, and quite fine.

# 1: when you are drafting a poem you write anything and everything to get you to the end. I'm not sure that 1 is needed at all. Pardon my saying it though, please.

In #2 there is a shift farther away from the abstract, and lines and edges begin to get harder as they are pulled into focus. I get the sense that the poet is being to find the words. The final line is merely an inturruption this reader.

# 3 is the poem. Only here does the poem race to the finish. The imagery is very fine. Every line is pointed toward where the poem is taking the reader, which is a very sharply focused view of this human being, followed by a pefect zoom out perspective, with excellent sonics. We get a sense through the imagery of who he was and what was happening to him. Good work. very good.

The only suggestion I could possibly think to offer is maybe using Pines, or the specific type of tree as the last word of the poem. But I love it all the same as is.