Though I Walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Dementia
by Cecil Morris

I can yet name every woman

whose breast I touched (or tried to touch)

in the 60 years since I first perused

the small photos of Greek sculptures in the

encyclopedia with something like lust.

Some days I count them off, my rosary of desire,

just to make sure I have them still,

something time and dementia

have not yet taken from me—

like that short poem about the kiss

time could not steal by that English poet

whose name I cannot quite recall.

I hold their names in my mouth,

sweetest chocolates that bring back

pleasure I probably did not then

and do not now deserve.

I do not always know where my keys are

or my hearing aids or that book

I may have read before but will read again,

must search through the house like that English fellow

hunting Tut’s tomb or that American

in Africa looking for a doctor lost.

No matter. All comes right. I have their names

and the memory of their breasts still,

and I know still I like a nectarine—

all summer’s sweetness in my hand.

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher and Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, has poems appearing in Amethyst Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Hole in the Head Review, New Verse News, Rust + Moth, Sugar House Review, and elsewhere. He and his partner, the mother of their children, divide their year between the cool Oregon coast and the sizzling Central Valley of California.