Dear St. Dymphna

an Alzheimer’s Prayer

You are not the simple country girl
doe-eyed on the prayer card

but a closet organizer, one who
takes a battered shoebox full

of memories to draw a clock face,
remembering the way fingers clasp

when they are joined in prayer.
I think of you as a carpenter

who crafts a carved gothic vault
inside the mind’s dark nave, the candle

waiting to be relit, a voice passing
in a litany of saints, a labyrinth’s thread.

I see you there always reaching out,
but how hard it is to recollect your name.

Dear St. Dymphna is dedicated to Bruce Meyer's father Homer Meyer who passed away 2006. Homer Meyer was an electrical engineer and wrote numerous codes and international standards as well as designing major hydraulic projects such as the lift system on the Canso Causeway in Nova Scotia.

Bruce Meyer has published 34 books including three last fall: Alphabestiary: A Poetry Emblem Book (with H. Masud Taj, Exile Editions), The White Collar Book: Canadian Poetry and Prose of the Professional World (with Carolyn Meyer, Black Moss Press), and A Book of Bread (Exile Editions). He was a national bestseller in 2000 with The Golden Thread: A Reader’s Journey Through the Great Books (Harper Collins). He is a professor of English at Georgian College in Barrie Ontario where he teaches in the Laurentian University BA Program. Meyer is the inaugural Poet Laureate of the City of Barrie.