APW

I've written better poems, but this one is a milestone for me.  I haven't been able to write about my grandma's illness up until now.  This is without the edits and suggestions from my classmates.

Hydrocephalus

She wasn’t born this way,

my grandmother,

water trying to drown her brain,

shrinking her lower to the ground,

embarrassing her, she says.

She wasn’t like this when I was a child,

slow-moving, forgetting and twisting

words, ingredients.  She was forceful, 

smashing potato bugs with knotty fingers, 

sweating in the garden, thanking precious 

Jesus for each breeze.

She used to know every bird by song,

quiz me on them.

Whippoorwill, Cardinal, Killdeer.

Now she asks me to slow down while I’m 

speaking.  

We filled birdbaths and plastic jugs

with metallic well water,

the way her body fills her brain.

We got chicks at the post office in spring

and mucked the barn and coops in our rubber 

shoe covers every humid summer.

I moved to a bigger city and she fell 

on her way to feed turkeys.

Perhaps thats when she smashed the dam

holding the water at bay, 

keeping it from flooding her brain.

I try to remember how she was

when she didn’t need indifferent doctors 

with accents and possible solutions. 

I try not to forget

she wasn’t born this way.