The View from my Perch

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.