Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

Watching The Dolphins Jump

I am leaving two weeks from today
on a jet plane to California,
my second home.
It isn’t the air that brings me there
or the lapping of the waves on the sand
walking
Santa Monica
watching the dolphins jump
the tide,
but my mother and father,
the wrinkled skin
of Alzheimer’s
and dementia
calling and hanging up
again and again.
This life is moving too fast
and I am being pulled in every direction
faster than I can
grow
arms and legs.
So I try to walk the balance beam.
Muttering
a language
no one understands,
searching through the sand
with broken lenses,
trying to see
what I have lost.