Losing Pop

That was your seventy-eighth year,
when things began losing you.

Put your glasses on a cord
keys on a chain
but found no tether for your mind.

You can’t remember
walking hand in hand by the water
the same way you used to lead me.
Sixty years between your grizzled fingers and mine.
It was all new to you

You made this decision,
that our time together would be short.
As the only gray-haired father at kindergarten,
an empty seat at high school graduation.

Pop
I lost you
the moment my name
was gone from your mind.