What Is It Part I
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Thsi is for my Dad, going through vascular dementia.
What Is It
1.
The man who used to be my father sits
Wearing the face that will be mine, 20 years hence,
Brooding in a place I cannot reach
In a time and space I'll never know
And speaks, when he does, as he never did before.
And so it comes to this, in the end
At least for far too many of us;
Live long enough,
And the mind wearies of its ceaseless
Chasing after things,
Turns in, and settles into the greyish No-Mans' Land
Of its Long-Ago,
The attics where the past lives on,
Where the fond and familiar reside.
Not so bad to settle there, I suppose,
Where everything moves through a better light,
Where the rough and uncertain
Is smoothed and simplified;
The familiar rules, the strange is banned.
The price though, is the loss, the erasure
Of so much of the Now;
All that which has travelled with you
Has faded to obscurity
And you live among unknown ghosts.
Copyright © William Masonis | Year Posted 2023
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