(for Pat Lawrence, 1941-2025)

She keeps dropping things—
Scrabble tiles, the endless pills,
the pens & pencils she’s always using
to sketch faces, landscapes,
the occasional naughty cartoon.
Parkinson’s has done its number
on her. A stroke hasn’t helped.
Now everything slips through her fingers
& clatters to the floor, rolling under
the kitchen table, the sofa, the bed.

But art’s too important to give up on, 
too much who she is. Her email handle
is patlartist. Her paintings don’t seem serious
until I realize that their smiling doggies
are all beloved pets long gone, mourned
& deeply missed. A bodacious self-portrait
in the nude on a beach, which makes me
laugh at first, has jagged lines
racing up her back, indicating the pain
she was in at the time, & still is.

One morning on the porch, she tells me
that because she can’t paint anymore,
she’s giving up sketching, too, out of spite.
I’m so angry, she says. If I can’t paint,
I’m done with all of it. I say Don’t be like that,
then leave to get our weekly groceries.
Next morning when I come downstairs,
a bowl of pears has found its way
from a kitchen counter into her sketchbook,
rounded, luscious, sex on a beach.