Max got in touch with me recently to share a fantastic poems he has written. He informs me that it is about his grandmother's dementia. Here is Max's wonderful poem.
Grandma by Max (age 16)
It hurts to see the dramatic decline
of a person once so conscious and fine
Now left to dine on forgotten memories.
To drown in a sea of nonsensical ideas;
to lose touch with life, everyone of us fears.
Concepts literal in one world
are foreign in another
emigrating back and forth,
in and out of reality.
Like a rhythm out of tune,
a field of the most beautiful flowers
now unable to bloom.
A crop colourless, seasonless,
gloom.
Memories burning on an endless fire,
as though the mind is now the body's pyre.
A spontaneous combustion
of a system so perfect and true,
now a ruined ecosystem
a permanently distorted view.
When I read Max's poem, I was reminded of one of my favourite poems, 'Visiting Grandad in the Home' bu Ian McMillan (Macmillan 2002). Here it is:
