Forgetfulness

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I know the actor’s name…wait I’ll come up with it, he was in the movie…gosh, I can’t recall the title either. I can see the scene in front of my eyes, it’s crystal clear, yet the names are gone…poof…disappeared.

Finger on the keyboard, staring at the screen. I know I wanted to research something and needed Google’s help but what was it? It always comes back, the actor’s name pops up in my brain right before I go to sleep, and I recall what I was searching for on the computer when I prepare dinner in the kitchen.

Going into a room to get something, or did I want to check something? Why did I go there? Oh, how we all hate these situations that make us aware of our age.

The brief memory loss, blank spaces, brain games, brain training, and supplements are all part of a special chapter in our lives. We might as well accept it, perhaps even embrace it, humor it, and deal with it -one way or another.

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The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

“Forgetfullness” by Billy Collins

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