Poetic License: ‘Forgotten’
I am afraid of being forgotten,
Of no one on Earth recalling my voice,
My laughter, the stupid way I stooped
And tilted to the right when I walked,
The drop shots I hit to drive
My tennis foes crazy,
The Frank Sinatra song parodies
I sang in the shower and to my friends.
I am afraid because I remember
How easy it’s been to forget
The looks, sounds and scents
Of my mother, brother and father,
The jokes of woebegone buddies,
The charm of former lovers,
Each day thinking of them less and less
Until much too soon, not at all.
Most of all, I am afraid
No one will read the poems
I once believed would be
My passport to posterity,
Afraid my poems will remain
Shut away in unopened books,
Or float forever unclicked
In the vast oblivion of cyberspace
With no one to download them and sigh,
“Wish I had written that.”