Like a dog with a warm
tongue, the water licks
their toes. Chrysoprase green,
semi-opaque, it laves
their swollen feet. It bobbles
zipper scars on knees
as they descend—
sideways sometimes, clinging
to the rail, leaving behind
walkers and canes. Rising higher,
it willingly embraces their billowy waists,
their spines, and they sigh,
and briefly close their eyes.

Lily leans into the walking
breast-stroke with which they
begin—nippleless in her
maillot, cropped hair
glistening.

From Janet’s upper arms raised high
depends an eagle cape of thick
loose flesh—soft 
as feathers, mottled, dimpled,
swaying.

Carol’s loose suit greyed with use
reveals a swath of pendulous white
belly or pale groin
as she swings her leg open,
closed, open, closed, knee 
bent, in the “creaky gate.”

On the deck, one of their granddaughters
idles, sliding down in her chair,
the air practicing caresses
as she stretches out her gold
limbs, the hollow of her throat
filling with invisible nectar.

The women in the spa
in their little purdah of no
care—salty as their own
blood—cruise, they ski
(cross-country), they rock
like the nursery horses of their
childhoods, they laugh
about who’s been bumped
on Dancing with the Stars.

Heads thrown back after one
bubbly sip—the young in soft drink commercials
seem as lavishly happy
as lottery winners. They look
the way we imagine ourselves
on the stages of our dreams—glamorous,
anointed, spotlit—our luck about to spill
into graciousness. 

And even in ads for walk-in bathtubs, 
incontinence pull-ups, stair chairs, 
dementia care, the actors don’t merely grin
and bear it, but almost chortle,
like Cheshire cats who just 
swallowed these amazing canaries, 
though the old they represent
are more like expiring birds.

But the worst soft pitch: these “personal” Christmas
pictures I’m looking at again, taken
years ago in the dementia wing
of my father’s “retirement home.”
In another life, his face would say
This is ridiculous, even if he played along,
sat in the appointed armchair
by the tree, and hugged the enormous white
teddy bear prop, as instructed. 
But he is in this current life 
and guilelessly presses his warm cheek 
against the bear’s fuzzy one 
and stabilizes the bear’s plump feet
with his free hand, as if they were a child’s.