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Forgetfulness

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 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.

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After the Ecstasy, the Laundry

Jack Kornfield

Go ahead, light your candles, and burn your incense and ring your bells and call out to God, but watch out, because God will come and He will put you on His anvil and fire up His forge and beat you and beat you until He turns brass into pure gold.

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Phone Therapy

Ellen Bass

I was relief, once, for a doctor on vacation and got a call from a man on a window sill.

This was New York, a dozen stories up.

He was going to kill himself, he said.

I said everything I could think of. And when nothing worked, when the guy was still determined to slide out that window and smash his delicate skull on the indifferent sidewalk,

"Do you think," I asked, "you could just postpone it until Monday, when Dr. Lewis gets back?"

The cord that connected us—strung under the dirty streets, the pizza parlors, taxis, women in sneakers carrying their high heels, drunks lying in piss—that thick coiled wire waited for the waves of sound.

In the silence I could feel the air slip in and out of his lungs and the moment when the motion reversed, like a goldfish making the turn at the glass end of its tank.

I matched my breath to his, slid into the water and swam with him.

"Okay," he agreed.

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