[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

[Shaun J. 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.