Alzheimer's

A blizzard, late in the season, arrives

with its sudden cannonading . . .

It sends a lost soldier wandering, alone

towards the center of what he perceives

as a vast clearing in a dense pine grove.

Snowdrifts will billow up past his thighs

and the chalk-blue terrain will forget

its own landmarks by nightfall. He will drop

his rifle and his rucksack on the snow,

hallucinate his dead mother

young again, then collapse. Then the moans,

the deep creak and clatter when the gray slab

of lakeice gives way. A braid of bottom grasses

will hold him down, a frost will heal the sky.