Rage, Rage, 25

A carton of eggs,
milk left behind,
a walking stick
abandoned on a cart,
discovered
in the lost and found
in the supermarket.

My cousin’s face,
her daughter’s name,
the parking spot
where I left my car.

Time and place
wave goodbye
and are quickly gone.
So much has become
ephemeral.

“What day is it today?”
I check my watch
for the third or fourth time.
I forget phone numbers.

I look at photos
but they are blank spaces,
gaps in the photo album.

Scenes on the tv screen –
“I recognize those faces,” I mutter,
“who are they?
Where did I see them before.”

Comment:

Ephemeral – “Something that is fleeting or short-lived is ephemeral, like a fly that lives for one day or text messages flitting from cellphone to cellphone.” Heraclitus says we can never step in the same stream twice – because the waters are not the same and neither are we. We change, things change. They do not stay the same. Here today and gone tomorrow. Like the flowers our kind neighbor brought us when our kitty cat passed away last week. She, too, was ephemeral. Just like the flowers. Just like us.

Some things leave us with sorrow – our pussy cat was 18 years old, and her passing took away her pain. Yet she still left us sad and grieving. And those 18 years seemed to pass in a dream. Where did they, where did she go? There is sorrow too in memory loss. The days of our lives, once fresh their memories, now filling with a sadness as we try to recall them. Memory loss – one of the great sorrows of aging.

So many things slipping away. Seasons passing. Daylight hours waning then waxing again, just like the moon. Water between fingers. Grains of sand through the hour glass. So many blank faces in the photo album. “Who is that?” “I can’t remember.” More and more of the family names fading away, slipping into the distance. And all too soon, we shall join them, leaving an empty nest, for, as Cervantes once wrote – “No hay pájaros en los nidos de antaño” – there are no birds in last year’s nests.