An Endless Prayer

This is part of an endless series of posts about my experience of Alzheimer’s disease. Some others are: I see you and me. And love. Loving Words at Sunset, Life Breaks My Heart, The Lost and Found, and See me?

Pinkie Patti prays with “her beads” (Spring 2012)

An Endless Prayer

She has fat little fingers now.
Her precious rings don’t fit them anymore.

At night, she counts her rosary:
one bead after another after another after another.

In the day, she sits and strokes the tops of her legs:
up and down up and down up and down.

Her hands, the days and the nights:
soft, gentle tides going in and out in and out in and out on a desert island.

I wonder what she feels as she comforts herself and gazes,
mindless, into the near and far.

She turns to look at me.
“Hi Punkie, I’m so glad you came to see me,” she says.
My heart is in a million pieces.

Post notes

I wrote this poem in this morning’s writing group. The prompt was “Five easy pieces,” a quick warm-up exercise in which we were asked to write five discrete sentences thus:

1. describe someone’s hands
2. say what they are doing
3. add an exotic location
4. ask the subject a question
5. have them partially answer the question

Tweak if necessary when done and voila!

Related articles

• The Daily Prompt – May 20 (thepoetryquestion.com)
• Prayer for Those Suffering From Alzheimer’s (donnyprevette.wordpress.com)