Forgetting

At first the gaps are small:  a mislaid key,

the name of the new neighbor, whose friendly face

invites address; then some familiar place,

its landscape changed by twilight's sorcery

into an alien facsimile.

"That sweet café in France (or was it Greece?)

where we sipped wine from Corinth (maybe Nice) . . . ."

"Don't you remember?  It was Normandy."

So we both tolerate each other's slips,

indulge the mangled punch line and the flare

of irritation at misquoted verse,

amuse ourselves with calculated quips—

till I look for a stamp, and, in despair,

I find an unmailed letter in my purse.

Carolyn Raphael

From The Most Beautiful Room in the World : Poems by
Carolyn Raphael, David Robert Books, © 2010; originally
printed in The Edge City Review.  Reprinted by permission
of the author.