Sheryl Nelms, Holly Hughes, Janet Lowers, Dave Persons and Carolyn Dahl
To experience the slow loss
of brain function before death
is to become disconnected from the sound of the tree
that falls in the forest. No longer able to ponder
the questions of our existence,
rendering silent the sound to others
who will listen beyond the silence.
Still, somewhere in the forest a tree falls
and others continue to collect the sounds
so that no one will forget that there was a time
when your existence recorded the sounds of silence.
It is the nature of poetry to help us understand adversity. For poet, Holly Hughes writing about Alzheimer’s disease helped her deal with the experience of being a caregiver for her mother who was one of over five million people in the US with Alzheimer’s. The experience inspired her to gather and edit a collection of poems and prose, titled, “Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer’s Disease.”
On two recent evenings in November, Holly Hughes and others read poetry and prose from her anthology, on the campuses of the University of St. Thomas and Lone Star College – Montgomery. All proceeds from book sales went to the Alzheimer’s Association of South Texas. The anthology may be purchased at/or ordered from Good Books in the Woods, The Woodlands, Texas, www.goodbooksinthewoods.com.
kenne
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