Poetry 6

Dementia

“I am the sea,” she might have said.
I am here, forever changing,
dissolving, aching,
a faceless lump
of sandstone evolving;
And the buzz of toothless prattle
is drained to pools of shadow,
flown wind-blown
raining cold hard flecks
of angry foam.

“I am the sea,” she might have said.
I was here, though familiar
is now chameleon-like in colour,
each wave so like the other
when the tide has taken over
when the time is ripe to leave.

—Susan R. Morritt

Ride-along to Paradise

Oh, Taxi!
Driver, take me
to that faraway place
where a quiet prevails
interrupted only by wails
and bird tweets, chirps and calls
to pop my walled silent needs.

Let us not think of next
tragedies to blow us
to bits, shoved deep in mud
slides, burned, crushed, feet turned up.

Come on, my man, let’s cruise
to the precipice’s crust
to an out-there minus
despair of emptiness long
overdue, to lie down where
spring is lusty on display.

We surely won’t pray, yet
we’ll question our place here
as we wait out the end
of a human race most
undeserving this lovely place.

“Thanks for the lift, your tip’s
on the dash. Be safe, go
straight, turn left up ahead.
Perhaps you can find one
more worthy than I.
Drive.”

—Sherry Fraser