First Alzheimer’s Sonnet by Marilyn Nelson

First Alzheimer’s Sonnet

by Marilyn Nelson

A wave enters the membrane labyrinth,

and something mushrooms from nothing to now.

Enacted on, thought disappears from sense

like the vapor trail of a skeptics awe:

Look up, no trace remains. The road to hell

is paved with good intentions once conceived

of, twice forgotten in a micromill-

isecond, cumulus lost on a breeze.

What if for a brief moment the flame burns

higher, as a thought forms of you, my dear,

then passes back into oblivion?

Each cloud is a face of the atmosphere,

as each wave is an aspect of the sea.

Forget you? Never. Not while I am me.

This poem was published in Obsidian, Vol. 5, No. 1, Special Issue: Black Poetry and the Politics of Black Writing (Spring/Summer 2004).

If you have gone through the trauma of caring for someone with dementia, of being a member of a family in which dementia seems to run, and/or if you worry that dementia is an inevitable part of your future, be it decades or years from now, this poem is a gut punch.

Even if you have never thought of dementia in a personal way, this poem is powerful.

We've got a modern sonnet here. Fourteen lines, syllabic rather than metered (10 syllables per line), and mostly slant rhyme or consonance.

labyrinth and sense hit on the in/en sound

now and awe have heavy w's

hell and mill are slant rhymes

conceived and breeze (my favorite here) focus on the long e

burns and oblivion really have only the "n"

but as if to make up for that weak rhyme, dear and atmosphere are true rhyme

as do the last true lines: sea and me

I love sonnets that stray from the strict traditional forms but maintain, as Nelson does here, enough of the form to be recognizable.

Of course, the strength of this poem comes from not just the topic, but the fact that it is written in first person. The poem does not start there. We begin with devastating descriptions. Those first eight lines describing the breakdown of rational thought in the brain of someone suffering from Alzheimer's seems both on target (from what I have seen and read) and also creative and imaginative (which is what we want from poems, no matter what the subject is). And this is all general--no person, specific or otherwise, is mentioned at all.

In line 9, we get a question as well as the speaker addressing a you. The speaker questions if thoughts of the you will come and then disappear "into oblivion." In line 12 we return to the cloud image of line 8: "a cumulus lost on a breeze." Line 13 returns to the wave of the very first line, turning from "nothing to now." I love that Nelson uses both the clouds and the ocean waves in this poem--they are both temporary and eternal, diasppearing in different ways, and are both associated with water (some forms of dementia are called "wet brain").

It is the last line which breaks the heart. Another question, as if the you has asked, "Are you going to forget me?" The speaker answers, "Never." But then, given the disease the speaker has, a more realistic answer, "Not while I am me."

This is the heartache of dementia; the person who was is no longer and with that, they sometimes forget their own loved ones. Here, the speaker knows what is happening and acknowledges that.

I don't remember when I first read this poem, but it has stayed with me for a long time. I think the same will be true for you and anyone who reads it. Marilyn Nelson is a translator as well as a poet, and I feel like she has translated dementia in this poem. You can read more about her here.

There is a lot of misinformation out there about everything medical, including dementia, but there is solid information, too. You can get facts about dementia at the following sites:

Alzheimer's Association

Mayo Clinic

Cleveland Clinic