winter on the river Lethe

Her left mitten, the car keys,

meetings, birthdays, the way home,

even you – lost. She has left

it all on the bank like so much baggage.

She’s emptying grain by grain

like a salt shaker, she stands

neck-deep in loss.

 

You visit the nursing home,

and her eyes are a slow drift of ice,

dim now, an unfathoming gray.

She looks past you when you

speak, when you tell about

the new granddaughter, the war, the rosemary

you still tend in her garden.

Her whole mouth thins into a question

you can’t answer. Neither words

nor love will reach her, now.  

They tie her down at night

so she can’t float away.

 

It was worse before she came here.

You’d wake at midnight to a cold bed,

the sunken hollow where she

had been. Always the same thing—

You run downstairs to find her drifting

in the kitchen, naked despite

the season, scouring the cookbooks

for some hint of her own name.

When she sees you, she starts to cry.

Asks you to hold her, whoever you are,

and you do. For over an hour, you do.

 

And over her shoulder you see the television

on the counter, broken but still on.

On the screen—a bright June morning,

a woman laughing under an apple tree,

a yapping black dog. All fading

to snow,

snow,

          snow.

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