Poet’s Corner: Mark Nepo’s Poems About Dementia and Dying

Editor’s Note: Recently my husband Ken and I attended Mark Nepo’s thought-provoking, quiet weekend retreat in Racine, Wisconsin at the Siena Retreat Center, right on Lake Michigan. The retreat was about his almost-latest book You Don’t Have to Do It Alone: the power of friendship. However, just that week his latest book was published: The Fifth Season: Creativity in the Second Half of Life. As a 74-year-old, he speaks most often to us oldsters about our aging journey. In our new blog feature “Poet’s Corner” here are two of Mark’s gentle poems from The Fifth Season addressing what some of us will face as patients and caregivers: dementia; and what all of us will face: death.

**

First, Mark’s comments: “It’s hard enough to experience the grief of having a loved one die, but it is such a strange and diminishing loss to have someone you love fade from view little by little . . . slowly vanishing”.

Walking on Sand by Mark Nepo

He is slipping more deeply
into his confusion. At first,
there were moments when
he’d forget what we were
talking about. They
appeared like sudden
potholes he’d trip in.

Then, he had moments of
forgetting where the car was
parked. Now, he seems to
be walking on sand.

Now, he wakes in the night
unsure if the invisible sand
of his forgetting is where
he is living.

It knocks the wind out of us
to watch someone we’ve loved
for years drift back into
the Mystery.

A second poem about aging and death . . .

As I Age by Mark Nepo

Little things fall away
As big things become more clear

I can no longer open jars
or carry two grocery bags at once.

But I can perch like an eagle
on the edge of the vastness
in any given moment.

I now walk into the kitchen
And forget what I was after.

But I can recite Basho’s instruction
To Kikakou in 1689 and join
their conversation.

I now stop near the top of the hill
Because my hips burn.

But can see directly into the soul
of anyone who has been loved
or broken open.

And I can wake in the night
with a sudden fear of death.

But can quiet that fear with
the ancient chorus humming
in the wind.

It’s as if my body is a nest
And my soul is a bird
who has waited a lifetime
for the moment
it can fly away.

Copyright © 2025 by Mark Nepo