I learned how the mind works

watching a stroke

dismantle my Grandpa.

If he wanted to know what day it was,

he’d say “Chris, tell me what…

…then his face would constrict,

his eyes would cross,

the skin on his neck would redden,

and spit would start to bubble

in the corners of his mouth

as he sputtered and stuttered

out words like week…year…month…

before arriving violently on DAY!

Then he would gasp with relief,

as if he’d finally found a breath

amidst a frenzy of sneezes.

“It’s okay, I’m just in the…bedroom…den…kitchen…BATHROOM!“

“He thinks in sets now,” my father said,

and it was true.

When he got stuck before a word,

you could see he knew it,

that it was in there somewhere.

But he had to run through the sets to find it.

My Grandpa.

He was the most straightforward man I ever knew,

albeit with a certain crusty flair.

His preferred assessment

of himself, the day, a meal, anything,

had always been “not so very bad.”

After his first stroke,

he switched from bluegrass to Dixieland,

and from banjo to mandolin.

“I just can’t make the same strings…keys…notes…CHORDS!”

My Grandpa once told me a story about his father,

how his father would sight down the line of fence posts

he had his seven sons pounding through the Kansas earth.

“I’m hell for straight,” he’d say,

and keep them at it until the posts

were exactly where he wanted them.

The last time I ever spoke to my Grandpa was over the phone.

I was in the west of Ireland,

he had just returned home from a hospital in Southern California.

“I almost died,” he said.

No sets. Straight.