Six Poems
At the Easel with Alzheimer’s
My father is painting in the basement: blue,
green, yellow. The cinderblock wall’s white-
wash is tanned with dust and the ocean view
obscured by a flapping sheet of vinyl. It fights
the wind. He says he’s inspired to blue. My call
has come to the studio. His greeting: I can place
you. You’re the pharmacist, right? The pall
on his memory has not dimmed his bad taste
in jokes or how at the easel he’s always affable
over the scribble of boar’s bristle, the give
of canvas to brush. I skip over laughable
lapses, as when he asks me where I live
and then pretends he was kidding. Name-
dropping, his mind grows patches, nicks
and spores like the salt on his aluminum
windows that will eventually make them stick.
Painting down there, his panes always closed,
the air warm and dry, not a hint of the sea
outside. What are you working on? His nose
nearly on the canvas, he can only say,
It’s getting better, going somewhere. It’s green,
blue, and not as grim as it sounds. A brain
grows lacy and colors squirm like the skeins
of yarn above the washing machine.
Don’t fight the wind, I tell him. Be a net.
Catch the world by letting the knots slip.
