My mother had passed away at age 94, after a decade of increasing dementia.

         While  Words Fail  
She was gone before she went,
slipping into that final forgetting
with each hollow breath.

I was her angel, she said
as she sat at the sunny table
picking at pancakes and coffee
while she still could smile
and think meaning.

Music kept her eyes alive
awhile, her feet remembering
thoughtless, but certain of rhythms
too deliberate to disappear.
She followed my familiar lead,
reaching for memories lost
with the fading of voice.

She didn’t believe in demons,
but I saw them slip inside her skin,
forcing pain from her pores,
folding her face in caverns
of anguish and alarm,
as, steadily, words fled, leaving
a frightened keening in their wake.

She was gone before she went,
and when she went, the world
filled again with words.

(elf 2020)