Senior Moments (Redux)
This is the way the world ends…
A slippage of unmeshed gears.
Tiny forgettings point the way.
Lost knowledge of five minutes ago.
Birds begin to fly backwards.
Clocks take to tock-ticking.
Tip of the tongue refuses to come.
Name the names around the name.
Poke in darkness like a blind man’s cane.
Red lights, perhaps run, or perhaps not.
Consciousness punctured with pauses.
Continuity becomes oddly uncertain.
The long past prevails in deep details.
An October in Greece in 1969.
The whine of mortars in 1972.
Available and waiting for you.
None of that has fallen away.
Your problem is remembering today.
Memories of the last 15 minutes
won’t join your mind’s parade
of events in a coherent past.
Where are those damned car keys?
Repeating tales to baffled friends.
Time wrinkles, crinkles, folds and bends.
The present quietly begins to end.
You wonder in wonder at what is lost.
A bewildered, vague old man, untying,
as best he can, the past’s tough knots.
