Picnic

Let’s have a picnic,

a quick break from our chores,

away from all the nitpicking bores.

Our own escapist play,

keeping whatever it is at bay.

Let’s make some hay with a sliver of the day,

sharing our blanket with salami, cheese, and chips,

crackers and olives and hard-boiled eggs.

We’ll pay, sure, of course we’ll pay,

’cause everyone knows the score.

Those yeggs abhor an informal spread and

will surely give us what for, and more.

But let’s go anyway.

Decide, quick, please, decide,

and nix and nuts if you pass.

I’ve yearned for this silly lark in the park

For way way way too long now.

Let’s have a picnic, please,

if I can even remember how.

Forget

I thought of something but forgot what it was.

Wish I knew.

Someone told me, a reliable source,

that if you remember that you forgot

it’s not Alzheimer’s.

What a comfort from old whozit.

So when I lose a word or a name, like theirs,

or put the trash in the fridge,

it’s a worn-out brain snap, not a map to senility.

And that’s fine, long as I keep the garbage away from the leftovers.

I love leftovers, meals and relationships, all.

I started here where?

Advice from a friend.

Friends are ideal, they recall a shared past,

even if I don’t agree with their details.

Such a snail, memory, when it works, but so subjective, regardless of our health.

My dad played and coached football.

I was on the baseball team, in the minors, or the majors, or Little League.

Big dreams, never fulfilled, but who didn’t want to turn pro?

My reunion is soon, 45th or 54th, dyslexic that way.

Some have passed, classmates.

Saw that on Facebook, where I need to keep changing my password,

so many passwords, these words that pass us by.

Some days, too, pass without a word.

I don’t post much, but what a luxury to have at our fingertips.

My fingers are fraught with arthritis,

so that might explain that, always searching for explanations.

I remember the post office and stamps.

What a joy, letters, full of language, sometimes misspelled.

Brown spots, red dots, beige age.

Humble regrets to forget, recall, think of, rise to.

Sliding off the front page to the classifieds.

Ancient newsprint full of spots and dots, all so ago, go dog, go.

Sidewalk cracks to skip over, anachronistic rover,

hurling into an existential spittoon.

Real, fake, sunny, slap your face with skin bracer

and keep moving with something approaching grace.