I’ll Be Your Words! (For Scarlett) Poem by Dónall Dempsey

I’ll Be Your Words! (For Scarlett)

Rating: 5.0


You look
lost

all at sea

as your words
come unmoored

& drift away

from what you were trying to say.

You used to laugh:

“I can’t even spell Alzheimer’s

never mind
have it! ”

Now you
are
it.

And even this conversation lies forgotten
like a fossil.

So much of your thought
exists only in my head.

The more you forget
...I remember.

Words
escape your hands


like a kite
snatched to the skies

you crying
as they fly away.

“Chasing clouds! ”
as you say
in a lucid moment.

The words you were
carrying to me

so carefully

spill
from your hands

you try to
attach

meaning
to their memory

as they bob
before you

like apples
in a bowel

blindfolded
trying to catch them
in one bite

one Halloween
so long ago it seems

that was only
last night.

“Shit...shit...shit! ”
you moan to your self.

This the only
word

you can lay your hands on
you who never swore.

I second
guess you

most of the time
&
most of the time

I’m
right.

Woosh you
off your feet

& carry you
to what you were going to say.

“You want to sit...
...under the tree? ”

“Yes...down...sit tree! ”

You telegraphed
from somewhere

inside
yourself

I get
used to your telegraphese!

We sit & chat
I all the time

reminding you what
it was

you were
going to say

when you can’t say it!

We get by
in this way

as each day
the words forget you.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Onelia Avelar 04 June 2008

An overwhelming extraordinary humanity - you have a diagnosis, too - an incurable humanity in heart, you poor Donall...

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Dónall Dempsey

Dónall Dempsey

Curragh Camp, Co. Kildare, Eire.
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