Alzheimer Twilight Vignette

This in which he 

Ends up smashing all 

 

The light bulbs left lit 

In that inner sanctum 

 

Of his he thought he had 

Remembered 

 

To switch off before 

Falling asleep.

 

Ruse Oppenesque

In this great
Lack of right

Clear air, the small
Broken spirit

Living and breathing in
This in which we seek

To find it still nuzzling
Our outstretched palms,

No amount of comforting
Artifice suffices to lure it

Out into the open any more.

Discrete Series Ruse Number One

Muse, no matter 
Where or when 
I find myself wanting, 
Without fail I try 
Sounding out 
Those most discreet— 
Yea, coy even, vocables— 
By counting back- 
Wards from a hundred, 
Always coming up against 
That most singular constant 
Loneliest one, my old friend.

On a Line of My Wife's and Some Others Borrowed from George Oppen

“Why, you’re just a boy with white hair!” 

Which made me think of that other 

White-haired “boy” writing

A poem about a friend visiting 

The rooms of Keats and Shelley, 

Who saw “they were just 

Boys’ rooms” and was moved 

By that.  

 .

And indeed for the poet, 

A poet’s room is a boy’s room 

And he supposes women know it— 

Perhaps the unbeautiful banker 

Is exciting to a woman, a man 

Not a boy gasping 

For breath over a girl’s body.

. 

Perhaps 

That is what remains breathless, beautiful 

In this in which 

Some people never know.