Dazzling

The Past is Hard to Forget

The mind is a cake that is cut, over time,
for some, into segments, fragments, crumbs;
my mother is vague about today,
and the past is hard to forget.

The specialist has a tender smile
to smooth my mother's confusion.
Why is she here? She does not know.
There is nothing wrong with her memory.

How is your memory? he asks her,
and she is scornful. Fine!
I am going to ask you some questions,
he says, with the same tender smile,
beginning the screening
known as the Sweet Sixteen:

1 to 8: Orientation to Time and Space
She does not know the date,
She does not know the day.
The doctor smiles: it's okay.
She guesses the season as Spring
( the leaves out the window
are orange and brown).
She thinks that the month
might be May. For the year
she wavers: Eleven or Twelve?
She cannot name the hospital,
but she knows we are on the third floor.
She knows what State she's in
(she's not demented!)
and she can name the Nation.

9 to 11: Immediate Repetition.
A tree, a block and a boat.
Repeat? A tree, a block
and a boat. Again? Yes. A tree,
a block and a boat.

12 - 13: Digit spans backwards
Count back from twelve!
Can you spell world?
Now spell it backwards.
D-L-O-R-W.
The world is now backwards.

14 - 16: Recall
Now, do you remember
those three things from before?
What three things from before?
The three things are gone,
no more tree, block
or boat.

Now some little extras:
Please fold this paper
this way and that.
Excellent, thank you.
Now please draw a clock.

Time passes. She hovers
over her hesitant circle
with a shaky pencil.
Draw a clock? Maybe not.
The tender smiling doctor
lets her stop.

You have done very well!
he tells her, and her smile
is smug. She has passed
the Sweet Sixteen.
her impairment still mild,
and like an adolescent, she smiles.

The mind is a cake that is cut, over time,
for some, into segments, fragments, crumbs;
my mother is vague about today,
and the past is hard to forget.