Fermata

I walk in as my mother plays "A Long,

Long Way From Home" from memory. The keys

kneel gracefully beneath her hands, the song

obeys her touch with such apparent ease,

that I am marveling at her technique,

not the progressive state of her disease.

While playing, she can keep in tempo, speak

coherently, & smile. She must have played

the same piece every day of the week.

Away from her piano-barricade

she'll talk as if the words do not belong

to her, but to Alzheimer's, to trade

a gesture or a fluting of her tongue

for once familiar melodies gone wrong.