*GATOR SPRINGS GAZETTE
a literary journal of the fictional persuasion
PROMISES TO KEEP(page eight)

MORE POEMS
Jerry Dreesen

ON FORGETTING THINGS

    I forget things: like movies I said I’d never seen,
    where the car is when I don’t park in the usual space,
    who won the World Series, the name of the seventh
    dwarf or thinking to tell you I love you
    when your dark days make even that unimportant.

    I forget names, like my first puppy,
    the one with the blind eye that ran in front
    of a car two days after I brought him home
    I forget names of my poems,
    where I put the yellow scrap of paper
    with the last line of this poem scrawled on it.

REMEMBERING OTHER THINGS

    Deciphering the simplest puzzle.
    Not forgetting to turn right at the next intersection.
    An equation solved without pause or interruption.
    Pleased with the slightest show of memory, I am
    the age of my father when he could not remember me.
    Do you know me, Father?
    You taught me nursery rhymes, sang me a song:

    “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.
    You make me happy, when skies are gray.
    You taught me to ride a bicycle, drive a car.
    Home from college with college ideas,
    I challenged you to give up old ways.
    You challenged me to love you anyway.
    I look like you now. But I still remember the song:
    You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you.
    Please don’t take my sunshine away.”
    I remember you, Father, but I forget other things.

THE BOWL

    The ground is still salted with snow.
    The cul-de-sac cleared a few days ago
    by red stripped plows that scraped
    a dark early hour cutting open
    my dreams of you.
    The streets are mostly ice now
    from alternate freezing and thawing
    of roller coaster weather.

    This morning the sky looks foreboding,
    long rat-tail clouds roll over
    a desolate landscape, the wind
    whips through the pin oak clinging
    to lifeless leaves. It is a day made for regret.
    A cold, gray bowl too easily filled.

SNOW DRIVING

    Driving for hours. Able to see only
    as far as the car lights can needle
    through the white embroidery ahead.
    The heater hums into the dark cave
    of the car, its voice buffeted
    by the flap, flap, of the windshield wipers.

    The radio's mumbling numbs
    their knowing what to say.
    They peer straight ahead watching how
    the snow weaves in and out of the darkness.
    They have not spoken since the interstate.
    There's not much to say in February.

© Jerry Dreesen 2004

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