No. 8: Prayer for my Failing Memories

Can you believe these are the hands
of an artist, my father says,
stretching out his fingers,
all of them long and thin except one,
lopped off long ago in a careless instant.
He tells me how it was to be young,
how his strong finger created music
that was a river -- and his piano teacher said,
Take care of those lovely hands.
And as he relates the story,
one more shimmering thought slips
from his mind,
rolls across the floor and disappears.

He is empty now.
He sits and stares.
His fingers
will never run up and down the keys.

I am so much like him,
though he is tall and I am short,
though his fingers -- most of them -- are long,
and mine are blunt.
Like him I have gathered everything I once was.
I carry it with me --
It clicks in my pockets,
a bag full of marbles.
Sometimes I pull one out.
I might hold one toward you that is special
and say, This is the greatness of my father,
who when I was five knew everything,
and when he walked through the house, the windows shook.

Sometimes I think of him and feel
as if my insides were slipping away.

Save me, I pray, from the thief
that leaves us nothing of what we were.