One Evening, at the Dinner Table

My father in his dissolution

from dementia once achieved,

it seemed to me, a kind of mastery

one evening at the dinner table

when, dressed-up and looking

quite as if he hadn’t changed at all –

this was four years before his final fall --

his eyes familiarly still bright –

he lightly purposed to invite himself

into the conversation in a spate

of fast elastic syllables which signified

pure play, beyond the bounds of content.

Alzheimer’s can have a style.

I stuttered badly when I was a child.

So had he. Speech for him remained –

sometimes remains for me – a trial.




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