It gets better when one can’t remember
the you that you were before dementia, 
winter fires set with diseased ash timber,
iced tea sipped while admiring the river,

the gardens you tended over the years,
the woman you carried one life to next,
tennis shoes flung onto telephone wires
hanging there like ghosts through the cold and wet 

seasons, bottles uncorked, balls kicked and thrown,
insect bites, high school heroes, jobs, and pets,
hydrangea bushes pruned, weeds whacked, yards mown, 
full-bellied moon, the Sonoran sunsets,

all the shallow wrongs you did to others,
lost in that dense fog, hope-starved, smothered.