[Siham Karami]

I think Eileen's observations are excellent. Adding the old man must have been a truck driver. This is the polish I was looking for, a difficult subject well-handled and kept my interest enough to read it over and over. Definitely the best so far IMHO.

[Lois Elaine Heckman]

Double post. Sorry!

[Lois Elaine Heckman]

I saw this like Eileen did.
It seems to me to be a person suffering from dementia, who is reliving a particularly vivid memory and trying desperately to return home according to what his personal (and altered), view of reality is. It doesn't even appear he has been outside at all, only imagined it, because parked beside the door could just as easily indicate on the inside, especially considering the alarms in this kind of care facility to keep such patients in.
Of the 4 poems presented so far, this is the one I like the best. The subject and its presentation resonate for me.

(Crossposted with Siham).

[Andrew Frisardi]

I think this is effective and affecting. The octave does a good job of creating the sense of perception blearing over, moving from the jolting sounds in the opening lines to the smoothed-over sounds later. Maybe my favorite moment of the poem, technique-wise, is "wheel him, / unwilling," the sense of dragging and resistance in that. I like Maryann’s idea of the em dash after "wait," although I’d also have liked an ellipsis before that word: "She’s . . . wait—" As it stands, it takes a moment to get what’s intended.

The situation is utterly realistic. I once worked at a nursing home, and an old man named Charlie every evening would wander the hallway, sometimes exiting the place altogether, to look for his sheep to make sure they were safe. In his life, in fact he'd been a shepherd.

This is a skillfully made and heart-felt piece, easily my favorite so far.

[Susan McLean]

Metrically, this is a bumpy ride, but I like the bait and switch in which the harrowing drive through snow turns out to be an escape attempt from a nursing facility, and the old man so eager to get back home to his wife rejects the actual wife, who is old and doesn't fit his image of the wife he is trying to reach. It is poignant and hardnosed at the same time.

Susan

[Andrew Frisardi]

I think that the rough spots in the meter suit the subject matter, and help give it some of that hardnosed quality that Susan mentions. The man was a truck driver, some herky-jerky motion fits that.

[Spindleshanks]

Yes, the best. I read it as did Lois—a dementia-afflicted ex-truckie reliving a nightmare return journey through a violent storm, imagining the wheel chair to be his rig. His reluctance to be returned to his room is clearly evident in the protest of his dragging feet. His disjointed thinking is effectively captured by the sudden breaks in fluency.
It seems that in most of the offerings presented thus far, obscurity and ground-breaking experimentation are regarded as fashionable—perhaps the New School of Sonnetry. Hopefully there are some Old School examples among the remaining, featuring skill, style and those elements that give sonnets their unique charm.

*cross-posted with Susan and Andrew.

[Ann Drysdale]

I have a feeling I've brushed against this one in an earlier stage of its development.

The thing that leaves the greatest impression on me is the loss that goes two ways. He has lost his wife and is being palmed off with an elderly stranger; she, waiting faithfully through the storm, has lost her husband to a younger woman. A situation both classic and bizarre.

Nice work.

[R. Nemo Hill]

It's OK.
Some poets think there are too many poems and/or sonnets about gardening.
Personally, I've read too many poems and/or sonnets lately about old age dementia. It's not that I am unsympathetic or have no painful experience of the matter. It's just that it has come to seem the subject of choice to elicit an almost Pavlovian sympathy/empathy from a poetic audience--a new sort of emotional canon poem. So overall, it seems too easy a mark to thrill me.

Nemo

[E. Shaun Russell]

I like this best of the first four too, but like many others have commented, it still doesn't do a lot for me. It's interesting and a little surprising, and uses language quite well, despite its bumpy meter (which, frankly, might be intentional).

I also agree with Nemo, however. There was a memorable dementia poem in last year's sonnet bakeoff (Max Goodman's), and Barefoot Muse just put out an anthology about dementia / Alzheimer's poems (Forgetting Home), meaning that the subject has, at least for our crowd, become very familiar.

Still, this entry is unique enough to make it interesting. Interesting enough to win a bakeoff? I'm not so sure.