Notes About The Poem

Thsi is for my Dad, going through vascular dementia.

What Is It Part I

What Is It

                                          1.

The man who was my father sits 
Wearing the face that will be mine, 
Brooding in a place I cannot reach
In a time and space I'll never know
Speaks,when he does, as he never did before.

And so it comes to this, in the end
At least for far too many;
Live long enough,
The mind wearies of its ceaseless 
Chasing after things,
Turns in, settles into the greyish No-Mans' Land
Of its Long-Ago,
The attics where the past lives on,
Where the fond and familiar reside.

Not so bad to settle there, I suppose,
Where everything moves through a better light,
Where the rough and uncertain
Goes smoothed and simplified;
The familiar rules, the strange is banned.
The price though, the loss, the erasure
Of so much of the Now;
All that which has travelled with you 
Faded to obscurity
And you live among the unknown ghosts.
Copyright © | Year Posted 2023

Poem

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