captured at bethesda terrace in central park, nyc

We are Forget

by Gary Glazner
Founder and Executive Director of Alzheimer’s Poetry Project

We are the words we have forgotten.
We are shifting and pacing.
We wrote this poem.
It’s a pretty poem.

Can you bake a cherry pie?
Never more, never more.
We have no horizon.
We don’t recall washing or eating
or what you just said.

Ask me my name.
Ask me if I have children?
You’re a pretty lady.
You have beautiful eyes.

Wash me, put me to bed clean,
hold me as I fall asleep.
Give me a kiss, brush my hair.
You are my daughter?

Light washing over us moment, moment.
You’re a handsome man.
Our hand writing is beautiful
twists and loops of letters
we can’t remember our hands.

Our ears are wishful
we can’t remember our ears.
We can speak every language,
we can’t remember our mouths.

We are porous.
We are the past.
We are forget.