I walk in as my mother plays "A Long,
Long Way From Home" from memory. The keys
kneel gracefully beneath her hands, the song
 
obeys her touch with such apparent ease,
that I am marveling at her technique,
not the progressive state of her disease.
 
While playing, she can keep in tempo, speak
coherently, & smile. She must have played
the same piece every day of the week.
 
Away from her piano-barricade
she'll talk as if the words do not belong
to her, but to Alzheimer’s, to trade
 
a gesture or a fluting of her tongue
for once familiar melodies gone wrong.