Lightning scatters the tree beneath

her eyelids.  Duckweed she whispers

between flashes, the dark distance

tentative, the blue-greens in bud.

The book says, Alzheimer's is the closest

thing to being eaten alive slowly.  But it

doesn't tell how to barter with this late

snow, give it a marsh of reeds elsewhere

to settle on.  To find her, I make myself

a stranger, come to her like an open cage.

But nothing I try coaxes her inside.

Her life belongs to another story,

the one where rain shudders to snow

and covers every bend of the road

as if in search of something.  What

does it matter now—she doesn't feel

strange or cold.  Why else does she

wander barefoot into the storm

if not to name what's left of our

world before the next act of erasure?