Read the winners of our 2023 Dementia together poetry competition

No one told the shimmering flight of damselflies
Summer is almost gone

No one told the honeysuckle-drunken bumblebees
Winter is coming

No one told the last late clutch of hungry sparrow chicks
The frost is almost here

No one need tell us
This may be our last full summer
Your body, strong and steady as the birch tree
While your mind
Drops memories like falling leaves
And coming winter storms
Will one day strip you bare

Still, we sit outdoors
Late in life, in late September
Clinging a moment longer
Under the first soft lit evening star

Meanwhile the passing day lives on elsewhere
While rooks are peaceful, treetop bound
And crows settle down on the steeple.

He’s as Welsh as Black Mountains, red dragons,
the white of a leek, but he’s turfed sheep

from his fields to reap a different harvest,
with hillside land filled with so much more

than hosts of golden flowers – not just to see
them dancing in a breeze but to fight disease

that mind-steals, eats memories. More
than ten thousand stand in rows, bulbs buried,

trumpeting leaves stuffed with Galantamine.
His gentle aid may mean she can again recall

those small October days knelt digging holes
with me, burying hope and jonquils.

(content warning: suicidal feelings}

His garden is overgrown. It has gone to seed.
A black-stemmed bamboo is stealing all the light.

My father comes downstairs for the tenth time today.
We sit and wait, knowing he’s going to say…
‘I want to go home.
I’m losing the thread.
Is it okay if I go back to bed?
I’m so unhappy… I wish I was dead.
And what time is it anyway?’

His sundial is buried beneath a shrub… He’s forgotten its name.
His bird table lies toppled on the lawn.

My father appears on the patio. We persuade him to stay,
drinking tea in his pyjamas, knowing he’s going to say…
‘I want to go home.
I’m losing the thread.
Is it okay if I go back to bed?
I’m so unhappy… I wish I was dead.
And what time is it anyway?’

A tangle of brambles runs through his rockery.
We can’t dig them out, so we try to cut them back.

My father goes upstairs for the tenth time today.
We guide him towards his room, knowing he’s going to say…
‘I want to go home.
I’m losing the thread.
Is it okay if I go back to bed?
I’m so unhappy… I wish I was dead.
And what time is it anyway?’

His garden is overgrown. It has gone to seed.
That black-stemmed bamboo has stolen all the light.

The body remembers
All that heading the ball.
The rise and fall.
The rhythm and timing of it.

WAIT–
WAIT–
And then the quick step forward,
Lean, load and spring.
The powerful leap of youth and belief.
Rising up, up
Arms and hands stretching out to God
As the sinners below
Jostle, push, grasp, grab and scream.
The knees bending to join the hands in prayer.
Back arching, eyes skyward, searching for inspiration.
Quick stiffen in anticipation.
        Rigid
        Stance
    Impossibly suspended in mid-air
        Superhuman
        Angel
    Momentarily God-like myself
The hard contact of ball to head.
Impact steered with skill.
GOAL! GOAL! GOAL!
Father, Son and Holy Ghost
Of our true religion.
Euphoric congregational roar and adulation.
Rapture and fleeting pride
As I
Rapid fall from on high
Assisted by the pulling of brutish, earth-bound men
Bodies entangled, mud, blood and
Floored.
Who sees the stars around my head?
My crown of thorns.

The body remembers
What the mind cannot
It’s all there, written in sinew, muscle and bone.
The bowed legs, busted knee and memory loss
Stigmata for those that can read
The consequences of the cross.

Where did Mick Jagger go
and the Wizard of Oz?
Sauchiehall Street and
the smell of coffee?
Romeo and Juliet?
They fled, hiding
secretively backstage where
the black curtain
keeps them away from me. 
    Blaze the library!
    Where I stored my rich knowledge
    and poetic memories, and precious
    golden bookmarks in time.
    Char the shelves.
    Tear the pages and crack the spines
    of every beloved novel
    that shall be opened no more. 
        Childhood melted.The
        playground crumbled
        and the swing chain rusted.
        The monkey bars welded
        into stumps of harsh iron.
        Did the children not know
        that they needed to play,
        Imagine, and scrape their knees running?
        Their fragile, vivid worlds
        fell into blackholes without them.

Remember me before
My mind skipped a beat,
My hands shook like leaves
Blown about in the street.

Remember me before
I forgot your name.
The love was still there,
Just tangled in my brain.

Remember me before
My world became a room; 
The only home I could find
Was in the faces I knew.

Remember me before
I cried out for Jane;
Searched your eyes for the lies
Whilst a smile masked your pain.

No, remember me,
If you can,
With Bob Ross on the telly
And a paintbrush in my hand.

Remember me as the legacy,
A great grandfather who could see
Three beautiful generations
Unfolding right before me.

Remember me as
Windy trips to the sea.
Bacon strips on crab hooks;
Jellies rubbing at our feet.

Remember me as the smile
Behind those thick frames
Laughing at the same jokes
Again and again and again.

Remember me not
In those last few days,
Those outstretched hours,
That tear-sodden haze.

I am here, I am here
And I will always… always care.
Please remember me not
as the man who wasn’t there.

A sunny afternoon, I call in with Ava.
Indoors for so long, I suggest we have a cup of tea outside,
give old bones some vitamins.

Two-year old in one hand, ninety-one year old in the other
we negotiate the steps, not easy
trying to match her tiny shuffles with me, while Ava

wants to run down; suddenly Mum turns and says,
    ‘you’ve got both ends of the candle here lovie’
which quite blows the wind out of my sails.

She knows who I am but not whose child this is.

She sits gratefully in the garden chair, exhausted
while Ava runs around being an aeroplane. We turn our faces
to the sun, have tea, as we watch the joy of a child

watering the bird bath. Ava runs up, hand out as usual
I go to take it – ‘No Nonna’ she says ‘Great-nana’
I watch Mum push herself out of the chair – with difficulty

reach for her great-granddaughter’s hand
and take her last walk to the end of the garden.
Both ends of the candle, hand in hand.

In the tangled web of memory,
Where past and present blend,
Dementia weaves its web so tight,
That thoughts are hard to mend.

Faces fade and voices hush,
As if they were never real,
While scenes and fragments flood the mind,
That no one else can feel.

Names and places slip away,
Like sand through open hands,
The mind no longer holds them fast,
The threads of life unravelled strands.

Forgetting is a silent thief,
That steals a lifetime’s store,
Leaving empty spaces where
The vibrant spirit roared.

The ones we love seem strangers now,
Unrecognizable and lost,
The memories that bound us once
Are now a heavy cost.

The joys and sorrows of a life,
That once was sharp and true,
Are fading into shadows now,
With much diminished hue.

But still there’s love that binds us fast,
And caring takes its place,
With patience and compassion,
We hold each other with warm embrace.

For though the threads of memory,
Are frayed and come undone,
Love endures beyond all things,
And lights the path that’s won.

There was someone by my window–
A familiar figure in a midnight haze
Intricate fibres hand stitched to porcelain.
An auburn ocean flowing in a fiery blaze

The mother; bound to astonishment
Storm clouds began to whimper… hiss… thunder…
She had waited years to expose her elegance
For someone to finally love her.

But I watched it from my window–
The familiarity, it twists, it throbs, it pulsates.
A view of intricate shatterproof engravings
They’re inside me. Indestructible paper weights.

Soon space’s streetlights flicker,
Morse code embroidered on a blanketed sky.
I sit and watch the messages-
As I decipher I wonder… why?

This wonderfully memorable masterpiece,
Meets my worshiping stare through glass.
I am held in a chokehold:
Drowning in this deadly hormonal gas;

And so there was someone by my window–
My vision clears from the midnight haze
I recognise this familiar figure
My subconscious seems to love her ways.

Slurred memories of passion and devotion.
A sense of romantic and sensual craze.
And so, it seems will I,
Loving her for the rest of my days.

The blacks of his eyes are milky now.
I remember when they held stars,
when they flickered at the touch of my palm,
when they furrowed at the egret’s scream.
I remember a time he grimaced at their childish wails.

The corners of his mouth don’t crinkle anymore.
I remember when a smile washed upon him,
when his face creased like unwashed bedsheets,
when his lips curved in an intelligent gradient,
I remember a time he found me funny.

His brows no longer move to the whims of his confusion.
I remember when they questioned my silly little idioms,
when they did not recognise a time-old melody,
when the cones of his pupils took time to readjust,
I remember a time he cursed the injustice of age.

He no longer seeks comfort in my warmth.
I remember when his arms could engulf me,
when my sadness became ours, and then suddenly only his,
when my hands slide into his like a mould,
I remember a time he played the piano.

He does not know me as his granddaughter anymore.
I remember when I was a reason to stay,
when our eyes would collect stars together,
when our smiles would meet at a common co-ordinate,
when his brows would soften at my hurried explanations,
when I felt as though nothing could touch me behind a barricade of his arms,
I remember a time he doesn’t.