dotage

Today's word is

dotage

This word feels all too relevant to my life.  And I don't even have the excuse of old age.

.(sigh)  Back later with a poem, if I remember.

*****
Saturday, 1:21 a.m.

I am so sucking at getting poems posted before midnight.  Most days, at least, I am getting the words up while it's still morning -- most days.  So as far as NaBloPoMo goes, I'm golden.  But I have so much to say on my other blog, and so many pictures to process, that I am sadly neglecting this project, which is also supposed to be good for my brain, make it dexterous and stretchy and fast.

I have the concept for this poem in my mind, but I have to go to sleep now.  I hope I work it out tomorrow, along with whatever tomorrow's is supposed to be.  Postponement, as I have found with this project before, is a very slippery slope, and I don't want to head down that way again.  But my pillow, my pillow -- it looks so deliciously soft in its little red flannel case.  And it's calling me.  I can't -- and for my health probably shouldn't, no matter how crazy I already am -- resist.

In better news, at least my thumb is healing.

*****
Monday, 3:29 p.m.

Whoa, I lost a day and a half to NyQuil.  Here's what I came up with in my cold-catching haze, though.

in a dream
I make a note
to remember a voice
its deepest echoing timbre
softened by coats in a closet
its shallowest refraction
calling lightly
across sunlit rooms

when I wake
there is nothing left
not the voice
not even a trace of
the world in which
I heard it
the world in which
I promised to myself
that I would always
remember it

and here I am
in another world

was that real then
is this real now

you, you should
have lived to have
a proper dotage
a sweet, feeble smile
an old person's smell
young small ones
to dote upon

memories of now to hold
when memories of then
would flutter away

what did we have
for lunch today, nana

you wouldn't know
but you'd remember
mama's hands
and then your own
turning dough
that rose, baked and fed
other days
thousands of days ago

today I look
into your unlined face
and you don't know
who I am
and you won't have
many more chances

and there is no doting
there are attendants
and they are paid
and there are no
young small ones

you do remember
mama's hands

you think they are here now
just around a corner
in another sunlit room

you can
hear her singing

how long will you
remember the sound

how long will she live in you
then me
then not

when will you really leave
this world

who will you be then