OTI:two poems, notes, one illustration:8/17/16

Open To Interpretation

Pastrami

It's some kind of ouija board magic,
I know,
Because I use it,
Poking my finger at the keypad letters.
Sometimes it doesn't work:
At the sandwich counter
I wanted to order a pastrami
But couldn't remember 'pastrami',
Perusing all the sandwiched names
Confused me,
I think.
I stood there transfixed,
Waiting for it to work,
Holding everyone up,
The tension making me stupider still,
And...
I ordered roast beef.

Void

You forget a name
Now and then
And with age more frequent
Until this void like drops rain begins
And you become a babbling brook.

DolphinWords

Notes: When healthy, we find our memories so quickly, so effortlessly, so transparently, that we think nothing of it...nearsighted from an early age, I just live with it, my glasses correct the blurriness, though up close in front of my nose I can see fine...I don't know if we'll ever find something to correct memory loss in similar fashion...Pastrami and
Void are about such a thing... lenses bend light, and that's how glasses work...I was reading more about sieves, and the moment at the Subway sandwich counter came to mind, and too, how I came to thinking about sieves some more: from the storage boxes, I grabbed a handful of old Poetry magazines...I had subscribed for a few years in the '80s...and they sit on the lower shelf of my night table...and with nothing to write in mind, I find something to read...and I opened one, September 1989, and in the table of contents, spotted a poem about sieves....Going To Sea In A Sieve by Robert Cording, and in the poem he references a book, Soap Bubbles, by C. V. Boys, and even a page, page six...I happened on this haphazardly...reluctant to suggest it was the library angel...but nonetheless...oh, it's even worse, Cording is a contemporary, '49 to my '48, and has some of my writing manner...anyway, page six is explaining surface tension, and of course, that was the import of Tuccia carrying water from the Tiber in a sieve...see yesterday's post...but the memory lapse at Subway gave me pause...actually was a pause!...thinking on it, it was like the 'surface' tension of the word 'pastrami' broke, and it just popped away, like a burst soap bubble...it wasn't 'there'...where ever 'there' is...and then there's ouiji boards...they only work if someone's cheating...but our thoughts and dreams aren't cheats, and it's a marvel just how we happen on this and that!...when healthy, it is like we are carrying water from the Tiber in a sieve!...or happy with our soap bubble memories like those colored plastic ball swimming pools the kids dive in...Ilustration...junior college professors have a lot of things to do, and if they can divert a class, set them off on their own awhile, they do it...in Graphic Design we were assigned to do these designs over and over...take a few elements, and arrange them in thumbnails....just hated doing it...next to the worst, making color chips for a color wheel!...

:)

DavidDavid