My Ivy Farms Book Club dined on delicious crab soup, salad, and yummy bread. The scene through Virginia’s (yes, our host has the same name as our state) window was Arcadian, rolling pastures dotted with hay bales. Poetry was read aloud with alacrity; local poets, dead poets and poet laureates. And while driving home I realized I’d forgotten my sweater…
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,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well 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 that you used to know by heart.
Billy Collins
Of course I read Billy Collins, not the “Forgetfulness” poem, although someone else did, but one about Birds, and another about a House. I must have left my sweater where my spleen used to be. This was Virginia’s group email:
A lovely sweater was found on the back of a kitchen chair.
Does it belong to you?
If read properly, does this sound a little like Emily Dickinson?
This is how the poetry readings affected me.
I feel so sorry for Charles Wright.
But Billy, you were the Hero of the Night.
And so I replied:
At the last minute I threw it over my shoulder
Never knowing, always needing
To cover or contain my errant arms
Wide hips and sunkissed neck from light
To warm me in the chill of an air-conditoned night
To forget on the back of your chair
Late Summer Herbs
MountainMornings 