by
This slender volume is a Poetic Memoir of the sorrows and stress of a loving daughter watching a close family member in the throes of the dreaded "disease of the decades", Alzheimer's Disease, and how optimism and hope are the only tools to fight back.
You walk a fine line.
You walk a fine line.
Settling in the soft light of the living room,
your brow wrinkles, as you discuss Pluto and Goethe.
Other times, you ask me—“ How do you spell your last name?”
I am totally speechless and confused.
I sit still, the room is cold and bare,
the silence bites.
Mother dear, what has come over you?
Your musical laughter and your warm hugs,
all gone.
What has come over you?
You were a academician once, delivering keynote speeches,
today, you sit alone in your narrowed dark world,
wrapped in yourself.
You hear voices calling,
you say it is winter, when it is Spring.
Winter’s long gone and buds are sprouting—
Yet for you—Spring is a mere hallucination.
Candice James, Poet Laureate Emerita, New Westminster BC Canada wrote:“The world is a song unheard by you. You are here, but not here, lost in the labyrinths of your mind, where electric sparks are mere diffused messages flashing through eclectic jargon.
In a slender and tender volume, poet Kamal Parmar brings to twilight life a mother/daughter struggle with encroaching Alzheimer’s. A vital memoir in verse, Still Waters is sensitive, touching, honest, even gritty, a compelling read that asks the question: Who am I? “Am I a young girl in ponytails with stars in her eyes? Or am I an old decrepit woman with a furrowed face and a doddering gait? And yet, I cry like a baby.” A luminous book, it’s a tuning fork for families coping with Alzheimer’s and the accompanying emotional wasteland. Lovely work."
'As the reader travels through these sometimes introspective and sometimes misty poems, they will find some lines, phrasings and passages that mirror their own journey through smiles and tears, love, sorrow and ultimately life."
