Water-Bug

June 7 2014

Forgetting

isn’t like the lost keys

your repeatedly mislay.

Retrace your steps, they say,

they’re here, somewhere.

When my father’s memory went

it was more like a lake had been drained,

the same calm surface

but nothing there,

no dimension, no depth.

Not the keys

but the whole damned car.

His famous stories

embellished, and flawed, as we remember them

have not yet gone;

but he has,

his entire past

lost.

Although he recognizes me

with enthusiastic ease

and is sweeter than I recall.

The very same man,

but without the strength

and in constant need of reminding.

So what goes on

behind those calm receptive eyes

his placid helplessness;

any fear, or insight

sense of time?

If enlightenment

is letting go, renouncing attachment

then he is master of Zen,

inhabiting the moment

and the next ...the next.

Or a water-bug

skimming across what remains

of a perfectly reflective lake,

its imperceptible weight

barely creasing the glass,

surface tension, impervious

no matter the depth.

For a thing to be lost

it must be possible to find.

While this is more like dying, than mislaid.

A death without an after-life

to reunite, and reminisce.