Memory Care

- for Anita

I heard some of you got your families living in cages tall and cold and some just stay there and dust away past the age of old. – Jimi Hendrix “Up From the Skies” (1968)

age breaks the cage
the canary
lingers

the boiled egg
of her mind cracks
open

day after
yellowed day
nothing stays

each morning she
rises to a
fresh world

smiles as she waits
for the shutter
to snap

plays out childhood
from vague finish
to start

she rides the glass slide
through the fogged
mirror