Non sequitur as metaphor

Words flee from her mouth  
like ravens from a towering spruce, 
ventriloquist birds that mew like cats, throw me  
off kilter, like the rotund hummingbird 
my mother asserts is swollen with babies; 
when I tell her birds lay eggs, she laughs—  
unless she’s independent and wants to do it  
her own way—like me!   
 
Not Alzheimer's, just dementia unspecified,  
said the neurologist, as if it were less than,  
like the tiny mustard seed the Lord said  
becomes the greatest of shrubs, branches 
into a tree, limbs stretched skyward.  
             
Her thoughts swirl and shift 
like bits of colored glass inside  
a kaleidoscope; they shimmer  
and shine


                                  splinter  
         into  
                          tiny  
 shards.