Faith Hope & Fiction

By Bryant Burroughs

Today I saw a bird flying
high above the aisles
of a grocery store.
I felt its frantic lostness.
For a tiny bird who lives in endless sky,
its entire reality was altered.

As it is with me.
I never thought my brain would fail me.
My heart, yes.
Heart failure took my father and his father,
the latter at my age.
Cancer, maybe.
My prostate for years has scolded me
for drinking too many cups of coffee.
But my brain?
It’s been the engine of who I am.
Bright, fast reader, big-picture thinker,
all gifts from my parents
and the Creator.

Now my reality is shaped
by terrible words:
stroke, brain bleed, ischemia,
and the most frightening of all: dementia.
That slow chipping away of memory,
knowledge, and – please God, no! – recognition.
Lost inside a closed down brain
is a prison sentence;
but not knowing my wife is worse than death.
I pray she remembers – come what may –
that I’ve loved and adored her
for a lifetime.

And – dare we hope? –
in the life to come.
And that I owe more to her
than I owe my brain.

Bryant Burroughs writes stories and poems as reminders of those things he hopes are real and true. He has published three poetry collections: Where Do My Words Go?, Graced Perception and Gladness Gleams.