Harvesting Imagination
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
Today’s poem is especially for ‘Hanna’ who asked if I have another poem about dementia as she looks after her brother who is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s; they both liked Misty Memories that I posted recently.
About 750,000 people here in the UK have dementia, and this number is expected to double in the next thirty years. I have seen the unbearably sad consequences for both sufferers and their carers. The British Government says it is committed to improving the care and experience of people with dementia and their carers by transforming dementia services to achieve better awareness, early diagnosis and high quality treatment at every stage and in every setting, with a greater focus on local delivery of quality outcomes and local accountability for achieving them. Let us hope so.
Some young people may say it does not affect them, but I know of at least two school children helping to look after a parent who has Alzheimer’s. Besides, we all have to grow old, and who knows…?
I once knew someone with Alzheimer’s who had been an English teacher and always loved poetry. Now and then in the later stages of the disease, she would come out with a very apt line or even a whole verse from a poem she’d once been able to recite by heart. So great an impression had some poems and events made on her that even the darker mists of memory failed to engulf them completely.
This poem is a villanelle, was inspired by people like my late friend and also the author Sir Terry Pratchett; indeed, all families/carers, some whom I have known personally, that have experienced or are experiencing the truly heartbreaking task of watching their loved ones' mental faculties slowly winding down.
HARVESTING IMAGINATION
Wheels of the mind winding down;
though time play fast and loose with us,
we’ll reap a harvest of imagination
A smile but lost its way in a frown
seeks sanctuary in Cinderella memories,
wheels of the mind winding down
Though dignity wear a faded gown
as it stumbles through a Hall of Mirrors,
we’ll reap a harvest of imagination
A heart that wears love’s crown
keeps beauty in the folds of its favours,
wheels of the mind winding down
Love’s spirit unbowed, unbeaten,
turning the pages of life’s kinder stories,
we’ll reap a harvest of imagination
Among spoils of battles lost and won,
pathways to peace for all benign ghosts;
wheels of the mind winding down,
we’ll reap a harvest of imagination
Copyright R. N. Taber 2010
[Note: This poem first appeared in Ygdrasil, an online poetry journal, June 2010, and subsequently in On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books 2010]
Today’s poem is especially for ‘Hanna’ who asked if I have another poem about dementia as she looks after her brother who is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s; they both liked Misty Memories that I posted recently.
About 750,000 people here in the UK have dementia, and this number is expected to double in the next thirty years. I have seen the unbearably sad consequences for both sufferers and their carers. The British Government says it is committed to improving the care and experience of people with dementia and their carers by transforming dementia services to achieve better awareness, early diagnosis and high quality treatment at every stage and in every setting, with a greater focus on local delivery of quality outcomes and local accountability for achieving them. Let us hope so.
Some young people may say it does not affect them, but I know of at least two school children helping to look after a parent who has Alzheimer’s. Besides, we all have to grow old, and who knows…?
I once knew someone with Alzheimer’s who had been an English teacher and always loved poetry. Now and then in the later stages of the disease, she would come out with a very apt line or even a whole verse from a poem she’d once been able to recite by heart. So great an impression had some poems and events made on her that even the darker mists of memory failed to engulf them completely.
This poem is a villanelle, was inspired by people like my late friend and also the author Sir Terry Pratchett; indeed, all families/carers, some whom I have known personally, that have experienced or are experiencing the truly heartbreaking task of watching their loved ones' mental faculties slowly winding down.
HARVESTING IMAGINATION
Wheels of the mind winding down;
though time play fast and loose with us,
we’ll reap a harvest of imagination
A smile but lost its way in a frown
seeks sanctuary in Cinderella memories,
wheels of the mind winding down
Though dignity wear a faded gown
as it stumbles through a Hall of Mirrors,
we’ll reap a harvest of imagination
A heart that wears love’s crown
keeps beauty in the folds of its favours,
wheels of the mind winding down
Love’s spirit unbowed, unbeaten,
turning the pages of life’s kinder stories,
we’ll reap a harvest of imagination
Among spoils of battles lost and won,
pathways to peace for all benign ghosts;
wheels of the mind winding down,
we’ll reap a harvest of imagination
Copyright R. N. Taber 2010
[Note: This poem first appeared in Ygdrasil, an online poetry journal, June 2010, and subsequently in On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books 2010]
Labels: Alzheimer's, carers, dementia, human, identity, illness, imagination, memory, mental, mind-body-spirit, personal, poetry, processes, reality, society, space, spirit, thought
posted by R. N. Taber | 07:55
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