What is this wave which breaks upon the shore
Of my ageing mind washing it so clear
That nothing remains, no single line or mark
To prove that a second past a thought was there
A name, a person now forgotten, swept
Backwards by the tide into a vast ocean
Where it is tumbled until that certain force
Drives it forward once more upon the beach
Where I walk slowly filled with inward fear
That what my memory’s lost I may not see
Before the next wave, surging forward
Obliterates all in its driving thrust –
Yet still I stoop, hoping on that sand to find
A shell of thought, a wrack of my own mind.