It was November and you moved 
so quietly across the wet lawn. 

Last night I dreamed of meeting a black bear 
on the trail near the reservoir. 

She snorted and sniffed the air. 
When I woke up, there was mist along the river, 

and I could hear you singing far away. 
You had put away the towels, left coffee 

in the pot. Somehow we have ended up here,
 at the foot of this old mountain, where rain 

sweeps among the pines. You left a note, 
such clever writing as the cold weather moves in. 

I feel like I’ve studied you for decades now, but all I know 
is that your hands are warm as you stare out at the startling moon.
                        

I stand up from the chair, no hands, 
and I can just manage it without stumbling. 
“Try again,” she says, 
and I do a little better this time. 
She gives me three words, 
and five minutes later 
I repeat them: salad, leader, salt. 
There’s a trick to this - 
form a quick sentence 
about a leader salting the salad, 
but I keep that to myself. 
I draw a clock face, 
the time ten past twelve.
“You know,” I say, 
“when this generation grows up, 
nobody will know
what a clock face looks like.” 
“It’s already happened,” she tells me. 
“Some of the old ones don’t remember.” 
She looks over the meds I brought 
to make sure she’s recorded the dosages right.
I’m hoping for praise, 
how hale and hearty I still am, but instead 
she suggests I give up my glass of wine.
When she asks me my goals for the year, 
I’m taken aback. 
I want to tell her I hope to stay alive 
until our next appointment.
Instead I tell her about studying calculus, 
which is a lie, but seems more ambitious 
than my plan to earn a spot on the Olympic Reading Team.