Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Bob Hicok’s "Alzheimer’s" is a quiet yet devastating meditation on memory loss, familial connection, and the surreal disorientation of witnessing a loved one’s cognitive decline. Through restrained lyricism and haunting imagery, the poem captures the estrangement and tenderness that define caregiving for someone with Alzheimer’s. The speaker, presumably a son, navigates the shifting landscape of his mother’s mind, where objects seem to move on their own, relationships are erased, and moments of recognition arrive like fleeting miracles.

The opening lines introduce a world where the laws of reality no longer hold: “Chairs move by themselves, and books.” The simplest objects, usually stable and still, appear animated, creating a sense of quiet but profound instability. This line encapsulates the experience of Alzheimer’s from both perspectives: for the afflicted, the environment is disorienting, unpredictable; for the caregiver, the past and present no longer align, and even the physical world seems unsettled. The next lines deepen this loss: “Grandchildren visit, stand / new and nameless, their faces’ puzzles / missing pieces.” This image of incompleteness—faces as puzzles with missing pieces—suggests that recognition is fragmented, that names and identities are slipping beyond retrieval. The children, once familiar, now stand before her as strangers, their presence simultaneously warm and painful.

Hicok then turns to a striking simile: “She’s like a fish / in deep ocean, its body made of light.” This description, both ethereal and tragic, conveys the paradox of presence and absence. The deep-sea fish, luminous but isolated, is a perfect metaphor for the mother’s state—adrift in an incomprehensible space, glowing with a life that is increasingly detached from its surroundings. The phrase “She floats through rooms, through / my eyes” furthers this ghostly quality, suggesting that she is not just forgetful but translucent, passing through places and people as though she is already half elsewhere. The next phrase, “an old woman bereft / of chronicle, the parable of her life”, encapsulates the central tragedy of Alzheimer’s: the loss of personal narrative. She is not just losing individual memories; she is losing the story of herself, the coherence of her life’s arc.

Despite this regression, the speaker acknowledges an unbreakable connection: “And though she’s almost a child / there’s still blood between us: / I passed through her to arrive.” The mother’s descent into childlike dependence is a cruel inversion of their original relationship, but biology anchors them together. The phrase “I passed through her to arrive” is both literal and poetic—he was born from her body, and that passage remains, even as all other bonds dissolve. The speaker’s role has reversed: once nurtured by her, he now protects her from the world, “from knives, / stairs, from the street that calls / as rivers do, a summons to walk away, / to follow.” The street becomes a metaphor for the lure of wandering, a common symptom in Alzheimer’s patients who feel an inexplicable urge to leave, drawn by the pull of something unknown. The comparison to a river’s summons evokes mythic overtones—the river as a passage to another realm, a transition between life and oblivion.

The speaker, in his role as caregiver, performs the simplest but most profound acts of love: “And dress her, / demonstrate how buttons work.” The image of guiding her hands, reteaching what was once second nature, emphasizes the heartbreaking infantilization of the disease. Her dependency is complete, and yet it is met with patience and care.

The final stanza delivers an exquisite moment of longing and fragile hope: “when she sometimes looks up / and says my name, the sound arriving / like the trill of a bird so rare / it’s rumored no longer to exist.” This moment of recognition, fleeting but precious, becomes almost mythical—her ability to say his name is as rare as an extinct bird’s call, something nearly lost but miraculously heard. This simile highlights both the joy and the sadness of these moments: they are beautiful but do not last, and they serve only to remind the speaker of how much has been lost.

Hicok’s "Alzheimer’s" is a profoundly tender poem, one that does not sensationalize the disease but instead presents its quiet devastation with measured grace. The mother’s decline is not just an erasure of self but an unraveling of shared history, of familial bonds that exist even as they are forgotten. The speaker’s devotion, his small but monumental acts of care, counterbalance this loss with love. The final image—of a name spoken like the call of a bird rumored extinct—suggests that even in the face of disappearance, there are moments of recognition that, however brief, remind us that love persists even as memory fades.