"Overcast Moments"

Call it what you want yourself to think,
"Overcast Moments" are going to happen to you,
if longevity finds your hand and holds on tightly.
Not just grey hair or middle age spread,
really old, brain soaked, full
of years and yesterdays you can't remember.
These moments enter your life flip flopping
into the lurking, mire of days when you are waiting,
for the expresso to start your train on the track
of connecting thoughts, searching for the moment,
confused only because your eyes opened this morning
when your dog Gypsy called
to be let outside to do her business.
She found a call to answer
while your phone was ringing unanswered.
These moments lay in wait for you,
invading, unwanted, relentless.
Where is that list you made of calls to make today?
Will you remember their numbers?
Will call waiting interrupt me, how does it work?
Will you remember who you just dialed?
Will you remember your username and password?
Will you be able to get a person on the phone?
Will you forget the grocery list?
Will you leave the green bags for carrying groceries in the car?
Will you forget your best friends name and your phone number?
Will you remember the names at your class reunion?
Will you remember things at 3am?
Will you put things away and can't find them,
and when you do find them, put them in the first place
you looked for them when you could't find them?
Will you drive by the very place you were going?
You had many items to get at the store,
but the one you specifically went to get, you forgot.
Have you already told the story about Grandmas' brother,
running around the windmill on the Ohio farm,
yelling fire, fire when there was no fire?
Memory is like the section of road,
made slippery from the water from the creek
that flowed over it most of the Summer.
It shines and sparkles in the sunlight,
but is so slippery it cannot grasp or hold
a single tale of its upstream journey.
There is an erosion problem,
in a mind like gumbo, cracking open only
when kindled by lightening strikes
to reminisce what was so sweet to be,
held in a life so full.
Time holds our life in punctilious memories.
It is what we have.
"Overcast Moments" are inevitabily embedded
on the calendar squares of our tomorrow.
We anticipate making the new ones,
we will forget.