Senior Moments - John Field

I was always a master                                                        

At forgetting my faults,                                                     

But where was my mind                                                    

When the kettle boiled dry?

And why is my neighbor’s last name

A ship in a bottle I can’t get out?

I’m growing old,

Each night dumber by another day,

My memory fading, a sight for closed eyes,

Missing in action almost as often

As lost luggage at a baggage roundabout.

Using my legs as a walker

Until they won’t anymore, picture me

Shuffling up and down hallways

Looking for the room where the answers

To whatever happens next are kept, 

And when I finally arrive there

Asking myself what was the word

I was searching for 

When I passed through that door

A moment ago? Has it shattered 

As if fallen from a great height

Or like a dog without a master

Taken off down an unlighted thoroughfare

In the middle of the night?

When I find it as I surely will before I die

Filed away in my information somewhere

Like a blade of grass in an acre of lawn

A whole Sunday of church bells will ring.

Until then let mornings, afternoons 

And evenings come and go as they please

Like broken fountains 

Denying parched mouths,

This way the dust, that way the smoke,

My thoughts as blank 

As the back of a photograph 

While I wait patiently for my piper to arrive 

With his magic pen and inscribe

The fugitive word on the tip of my tongue.

Believe me, at my age it’s not the present 

But the thought that counts.