Saturday book feature — Fading into Focus — Joan Kantor

Back To Before

—with my mother at The New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT

She stares at the painting of an endless seascape,
her eyes and mind dimmed with age.
She’s moved way past the forbidden,
and as the glistening thick swirls of
deep blue-green brushstrokes
call her to touch,
she feels the texture with the tips of her fingers
and finally sees.
Her senses flare with the primitive thrill of sloshing sounds
in the dark,
as sinking into the surface she sways
to the distant reminiscence of gentle waves,
while slowly rocking and riding the softest of swells
to the undercurrent’s distant steady pulse.
There’s no point in telling her not to touch.
Compelled,
she’s rediscovering the beginning
at the end.

by Joan Kantor, from Fading into Focus

buy link: https://www.amazon.com/Fading-into-Focus-Alzheimers-Relationship/dp/1505633982