Communication

My daughter and I work with words

share phrases back and forth

shuffle clauses for clarity.

Her granddad is different.  His words

day after day, are the same —

same stories, same phrases.

Many of our words he doesn’t hear

His son says it makes little difference

even when he could hear he didn’t listen

even when he could remember

he still told the same stories.

But today

when he came home

I was digging up the garden

He said, Want me to do that?

I let him take the shovel

I steadied him

he broke up the dirt

I tossed it, with another shovel

into the pile.

He tired quickly, but joined in again soon

and we moved

in the steady language 

of working together

remembered by the body

safe from the mind’s forgetting.

We finished that job

the smooth soil

our own new story.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 28, 2011