Drinking Frappuccinos on a Dementia Ward

Drinking Frappuccinos on a Dementia Ward

At last, the night-mind’s unconsoled colic                          

—bleak lashing tears, fumblings in shredded  

junk—gives way to day’s sweet milk you       

once brought me, need before word, word    

before names, a world certified by just           

this warmth, soft touch, familiar smells.     

There are holes in your head, there are holes 

in mine as well. I don’t speak carelessly—

How could I in this place made only of          

particulars: one bed, one bureau, two scuffed

chairs. A tiny plastic dog that was the year’s best gift.

Self’s own siege grinds devious. Opaque as opening

your hand while keeping it clenched tight. Hard as the

glare ice that forces water from my eyes

and lets soft colours bloom.

What a passage nature shipped you on. Its                 

scissoring deaths and random flaring births, your      

dogged hemmed-in fight stamp witnessing to space. 

Vacuum voice to murmurs, murmurs into void.       

                                                                                  

But heart is not a hole. In its dark, thick

wild shoots and rustlings, swarms of succulent     

tiny tadpoles huddling in mud-rut puddles.

Deep earth hum of sitting quietly together.

This peace we sit in, sipping, being beyond    

names, is also beyond time, a thousand          

day-nights passing exactly the same way:                   

sun coming up, sun climbing a pale blue hill, sun

going down. Milk of moon and cloud exchanging places.