Last night the clocks fell back in the U.S. (Lagging behind Europe, as usual now for the former empire.) About ten years ago, I heard about my mother's diagnosis of Parkinson's disease in early November, and I wrote the poem below. [Note: blogspot keeps inserting a space before the last lines of my poems. I can't prevent it. Why?]

Since it's also the time of year when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest, I have included below that a poem I wrote about death. Any old excuse, yeah? I found myself using that phrase about the veil, which I love, and repeat every year with relish, to one of my dying patients the other day. As I said it, I wondered whether she was thinking it was a bit insensitive of me, since we both knew she would be imminently passing through that veil. Or, being the no-nonsense type she was, she may have thought I was full of crap. Either way, she passed through the veil yesterday, just after midnight. I hope she has found what she was looking for.

Fall Back

November again. Isn't this one

always coming around, with its

dead letter days, its footfalls

on wet leaves, its numbed sounds?

There'll be no more laughter now,

and not a lot of happy ever after.

My mother is missing. The stars too,

the stars are not where I left them,

they are not in their constellations.

Through the keyhole of midnight

I have glimpsed the white tiles

of the future, the stark walls

and the uncut shadows. Losing her

to her own life is one thing—

now and then we all take on water,

sink a little lower—but this little

understood, misdiagnosed, neurological

disaster: that this should have

my mother now just seems unsound.

But there it is: the tug of war

between antagonistic muscle groups,

the lost inhibition of wayward

neurons. Paralysis agitans. Eventually,

I am told, every movement

must be voluntarily controlled. Today

our creek is suddenly running wild,

following the season's first storm;

walnut leaves, black locust clog the drain

until our road's awash with rain;

the wind soughs in the thickening black,

last night, we fell back, and the clocks

with their one frail extra hour

snatched us out of the jaws of the dark.

All Souls Passing Over

Today of all days you can almost see through the veil;

due respect to the white bones and the hags

with snakes for hair, one glance at their awful beauty

inviting remorse; the trees in the river's mirror

are almost there, almost on the other side,

their hesitating makes the water shiver

and though you may tell yourself

those are just the forked limbs of willows

reflected in a surface, you also know

that faint splashing to be the oars of some

ferryman who rises out of the mist

with the look of a clock maker you once knew

and takes from his pocket something meaningful

like a key that unlocks the gate you have been

gazing at the garden through since you were little.