He stared at the words on the paper-
at least a dozen times.
At last he gave a little laugh and said.
“I can’t recall if these are mine.
I recognize a familiar style; a well-worn rhyming scheme.
Perhaps I may have written this back when still a teen.”
Beneath his façade of outward calm, I thought that I espied
a too familiar horror in his bespectacled eyes.
I saw the fear of loss of self, of dignity, of mind.
A brilliant wit now silenced, aware of its decline.
His mind was like a drowning man who panics in the brine;
eluding would be rescuers, going down for the third time.
He handed back the paper and I was too kind to say
that this was the piece of verse he finished yesterday.
Forget me not, It seemed to say. Please don’t leave me behind,
although the better part of me has died before my time.