I don’t want to believe that we are imprinted

like the ducks.  There is a rumor

that even DNA can change.

I want to take that rumor to heart and let it sit there,

for awhile,  and speak to me.  What is it saying?

Then I look down at my feet–toes bent, flat feet, arthritis,

weak ankles.  What is it saying?

That this life has not been an easy walk for me

or does it mean that I am like my mother’s family

and that, for all my bellyaching and self discovery, I had no choice.

Is that the death sentence?  Who’s meaning do we choose,

And why?

 

I wonder at, all of us sharing, so many layers of intolerance.

Why we do not have one clear moment of voices raised in silence

that rakes away all this till………..we all wake up,

scratch our heads,

and go wait a minute.

It seems that simple to me. I beg for one lucid moment

with my father, and it comes.  And then he wonders off

into the same patter of thought and mind leading him to a place

where I’d like to shout to him, “Turn left, pass go.  No,

You don’t want to go there” or does he—self punishment, self imprisonment

making its final debut.  What is dementia anyway?  Have we all succumb to it?

And why?

 

Maybe, we are like onions.  Peeling back the layers,

you come to emptiness, and that scares us–

like cavemen looking at fire.  Maybe, we will withstand all layers

of loss, of death, of disengagement and deceit that blanket us

rather than to see that truth.  And, maybe–like caveman–

we still do not understand the emptiness inside the fire,

the fire inside the emptiness.

And why?