Glass Door Handles
You have been wheeled to a table
and you speak a complete sentence when
you see me, “Our relationship is deep.”
I nod and say, “Yes.” This is a fine start
to any day but I notice you’re not wearing
your glasses, so after wheeling you to
a place where we can hear ourselves talk
I return to your room to find them
but can’t. Also, I’ve noticed that no one
has brushed your teeth again this morning.
I walk out to administration and leave
a message for the director. Every day
it’s glasses or you’re dressed in someone
else’s clothes or that you need to be
changed and you’ve only gotten up.
But I calm down and I try to get you
to sip a cappuccino I brought.
You dribble as you drink and I need
to dab your long-sleeved red t-shirt.
Breakfast is late but we make do
by my telling you about the handyman
that’s coming to fix the front door
glass door handle later this morning.
You are intrigued since you have
always loved the way light plays with
the facets of those cut glass handles.
When the doors are opened
to the dining area, I wheel you
to our table by the window, point out
new blossoms that opened, new leaves
unfurling on branches of trees.
Wally Swist’s new books include Aperture (Kelsay Books), poems regarding caregiving his spouse through Alzheimer’s, and If You’re the Dreamer, I’m the Dream: Selected Translations from Rilke’s Book of Hours (Finishing Line Press). Poems, essays, and translations have appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review, Commonweal, Healing Muse, North American Review, Other Journal, Rattle, and Your Impossible Voice. Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012) was co-winner of the 2011 Crab Orchard Open Poetry Competition. He was also the winner of the Ex Ophidia Press Poetry Prize in 2018 for ‘A Bird Who Seems to Know Me’.
Amethyst Review 