Goodbye

Where are you?

 

Perhaps I mean

“Where is the you I know?”

 

Are these two the same?

 

Do both die slowly

in this death march of the mind,

this Dachau of dreams?

 

Is self peeled off in skins,

that which I’ve touched the first to go,

then deeper ones

known just to you?

 

In this retrograde revelation

have you met a boy that looks like you?

Do you know him:

his hopes, loves, reality;

is this at all familiar?

 

Now is all you have, I know.

But now is infinite and true.

May I meet you there,

whatever “you” I find?

May we be at home again…

together?

 

Can each successive “now”

make yourself known to you again,

and string staccato notes

into legato lines

that you can sing?

 

When skin has gone

is all that’s left a soul?

Is this when we must say…

 

Goodbye?

 

D. Potts, for National Alzheimer’s Month