Our Time Bomb
By our eighth decade,
the correspondent wrote,
over twenty-percent
will succumb
to dementia:
I can see her,
fixed to forgetting,
and sat bed-side,
the frail ‘other half’ left,
shelled, bombed-out.
Will there be enough room,
for so many?
The twenty percent,
to be bed-locked,
to be bed-blocking?
As you avoid
hospice-bound falls,
on shortened stick-ticked walks,
or on a shuffle between rooms,
before the last shuffle begins,
will you be feeling lucky
to be, in your moments,
one of the eighty per cent,
still lucid, but alone,
in your eighties?