A Jeep In Summer

Grandma Poem

Grandma says she has had her blue eyes for a long time
and she waves goodbye on Sunday with her top denture
and it’s funny and we laugh
but we don’t know what the churchpeople think.
She has changed, but she’s still a main attraction,
center of action, in the van, teeth in her hand.

Grandma and her blue eyes tell me something she has forgotten,
even though Grandma and her blue eyes have
some unkind form of dementia disorder disease.
I know, I know. It is unkind that some of us
misplace our being and yesterday’s toast,
and being less, being dissembled, we have to love them more.

In I’m going crazy moments, some of the anger is tempered,
some of hers restrained, some of mine forgotten.
But why couldn’t you have looked at those beautiful trees
a little sooner?

Grandma says her father gave her her name
and she’s had it for a long time. This also is funny
and we laugh dimly,
and we hope her day has more breath of laughter
than we saw last year.

Grandma doesn’t understand the time and
why we lock the door. It's to keep her in. To keep her safe.
Some of her is some of me,
running around weeping and sweeping,
having some doubts and delusions and deliberate
churchtime bedtime ceremonies.

I wish Grandma would tell me something about myself
and I wish she wouldn’t bang at four in the morning.
But maybe that’s me confused and dark and
I get to blame her again because there are things I don’t know,
like who to ask for help at four in the morning
and what I might say next and who I might be.