This poem is the Second Prize Winner in the GCWL 2006 Poetry Contest.
On a hill in southern Newport
in the third floor parlor
of your nursing home,
we sit at dusk,
windows for walls
on two sides. I watch a blood of colors
rise from pollution and fade,
neon score the dark valley.
What do you, a gathering darkness,
see from the hold of your wheelchair?
…window a mother thing a space,
you say, arms and body reaching forward,
vinyl and metal creaking
with your shifting weight.
…John, you say,
eyes in love with the invisible.
You are somewhere between
yourself and the glass
where memory and dementia unfurl
their ribboned gift: a world that accepts you
briefly on your own terms, the scene
beyond it mere drapery,
and beside you
I am the forgotten
who wheels you back and forth in time
I am the missing,
the god without language to enter
your story, your moment
of pure creation.
