Losing It

Before conscious memory, before language
gave me these unsatisfactory terms
for saying who I am and how emotions
are flowing through, everything
I had to lose was whole.

Now I am seventy, full of doubt-fragments
of rage and tenderness,
and I have had a vision of frightening
forgetfulness, a dream
on August 11th.

This how it goes.  I am in an urban conference
setting, walking in and out
of wide hallways and those huge meeting rooms
with adjustable walls.

I am confused and have no short-term memories
to locate myself with.  It is a very convincing sense
of how it may feel to have had a stroke.

Then I am in a car, driving,
with a man in the passenger seat talking.

I have no recall as to who he is, how we got there,
or what he is talking about.  I am driving,
going nowhere I know.

Now in the dream I am seated at a table
of restored consciousness
with this awareness we have here,
the connection to time and space,
with this sharing through the eyes
a knowledge of who we are, and where,
and a few ingenious guesses at to why.

Such beautiful companionship
holds that table of bright being.

A man at the other end, a friend in spirit,
no one known actually, he looks at me
seeing the grief and terror I have just felt
for my diminished consciousness.

He reaches his hand toward me acknowledging the grief.
I hold his fingers.  That was the dream.

Now at another table, not in any dream,
a round restaurant table.  I come along an aisle.
They see me first
and put paper napkins to hide their faces
except for the eyes, like muslim women,
like harem princesses, like train robbers.

It is my son Benjamin, 42, and his two children,
Briny, 14, and Tuck, 7.
I sit down and tell them the dream.
Then announce that I shall recite
an Emily Dickinson poem that I have just last night
memorized, proof I have not lost it yet.

     God made a little gentian.

I explain what they may not know
that a gentian is a blue flower that blooms
in late November.  Some of them grow
in a little dell near my cabin.

At the appointed time each year I go out,
as a poet must, and there they are,
deep imperial blue, the size
of Christmas bulbs glowing.

     God made a little gentian.
     It tried to be a rose and failed.
     And all the summer laughed.
     But just before the snows

     There rose a purple creature
     That ravished all the hill,
     And summer hid her forehead
     And mockery was still.

Pause, longpause.

     The frosts were her condition.

That's the best line.
So far, yes it is, says Briny.

Now I lose the thread completely
of the poem's going.

     The frosts were her condition.

Pause.  I am very close to cursing
in front of my grandchildren.

     God made a little gentian, I repeat.

     God made a little snowman, says Benjamin.
     Frosty was his name, says Tuck.

     His nose was drippy and his eyes
     were cruel and insane, says Briny.

They're going round the table.

     He romped and played the tuba.
     No one could keep him quiet.

     They sent him to Aruba
     And put him on a rice diet.

Grow still thy mockery,
I chime in grand poetic tone.

So I shall now paraphrase
what I cannot precisely
at this moment quote.

     The lady would not put on her purple dress,
     until this relative from up North called,
     somewhere near Chicago, to suggest
     she should get out more, join a bookclub
     or learn French.  No need to be chained
     to an apartment like a park bench to a pole.

Now the Tyrian, ah the Tyrian from Tyre,
it comes back, ancient coastal town
down where now is brutal Lebanon.

Tyre and Sidon, twin sources
for the beach mollusc dye
so prized by royalty, indigo
with streaks of crimson.

     The Tyrian would not come,
     and why should she, really.

     The Tyrian would not come
     until the North invoke it.

Wait for it, wait,
Emily's poignant final question,
so late arising in November.

     Creator, shall I bloom?

Thus to openly satirize granddaddy
loudly and unanimously,
when he shall no more obviously
be losing it than now,

may be a way to finish dinner
without having to sit in silence
while he weeps for his forgetting

     God's goddamn little gentian
     that nobody can remember how
     or where he used to put it.

This is not the end.
We shall use the gentian
for a blue flower torch
through the dark of this
into whatever is next.

The sky's deep blue before it goes black,
darkest dew-soaked shade, my friend,
this love at the last
that does not want to leave.

Even with time no longer in the mix,
we grow more awake in the night of it,
this lovelike lake filling with snowmelt.



#520

     God made a little Gentian -
     It tried – to be a Rose -
     And failed – and all the Summer laughed -
     But just before the Snows

     There rose a Purple Creature -
     That ravished all the Hill -
     And Summer hid her Forehead -
     And Mockery – was still -

     The Frosts were her condition
     The Tyrian would not come
     Until the North – invoke it -
     Creator – Shall I – bloom?

                                    - Emily Dickinson