FORGETFULNESS

forgetfulness, by billy collins
this is a post about Poetry Out Loud.
I dunno if I posted about POL last year, but even if I have, I can reiterate a few facts about this competition.
At Burlington, it's school-wide.
i mean, poetry is permeating the school in every way. people are reciting poems to each other, people are basking in poetry on their way to class, the halls are decked out in poems, etc.
it's a wonderful season.
i started memorizing my poem today.
it's due tomorrow.
but every time i read it, i grin. i love it.
it makes my heart sing a little.
skip a beat.
it doesn't even bother me that two others are saying the same poem because i feel like i definitely have a different take on it than both of them.

it's called forgetfulness, by billy collins.

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,
or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

it has floated away down a dark, mythological river,
whose name begins with L as far as you can recall,
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
you used to know by heart.