Revelations of the Temporal

BY ANGIE MACRI

He had a name written
that no one knew but himself.
Time came he couldn’t speak.

But first, he spake as a dragon.
He called my name
coming up the stairs,

the name of an angel
that he had given me,
the name of his mother

dead when he was young.
As if to say please.
And there was nothing

I could do but watch
the unwind of his brain
in the disease, the plaques

and tangles in his mind.
We shared the anger of a dragon,
unable to understand anatomy,

neuropathology,
fate, the plan. Open
came the sealed book

of the future, the morning
star, the stairs of oak
unwinding to a name.

Angie Macri is the author of Underwater Panther (Southeast Missouri State University), winner of the Cowles Poetry Book Prize, and Fear Nothing of the Future or the Past (Finishing Line). “Revelations of the Temporal” rises from the intersection of her father’s King James Bible and Alzheimer’s. Her other recent work appears at Terrain.org and Waccamaw. An Arkansas Arts Council fellow, she lives in Hot Springs. Find her online at angiemacri.wordpress.com