Conversations with Victoria

Unravelling Time (For my mother lost to Alzheimers) The knot that holds all my days together is coming unravelled and all the roads I have travelled are separating, dispersing and fading into forgotten days; and all the ways of remembering are dismembering themselves like limbs lost in an accident, scattering across the landscape of a forgetful mind.  I wonder if the transition into oblivion will be painless. Will I know how to go  “gentle into that goodnight” and slow the pace, concede the race allowing amnesia to be my blanket? Or will I fight, as the poet directed,  for a reprieve, for more days  to learn new ways to build a wall  and forestall the unwanted invasion of my wandering senses.  It will be a prison without walls or wardens yet when I am finally lost I will still be me. Until then, I will be my own gatekeeper while I am still free -  and I can dream of better days.