Lost and Found

Words begin to fail me, become hard to find —
not that at 56 I’m fading fast, but I notice
because I’m so used to having words come easily,
anticipating my needs, mobbing me with possibilities,
synonyms, interconnections. Words are my oldest friends.
When they hesitate or frown even slightly,
I notice. Thus already I can watch in slow motion
the “dreaded ravages of age,” and this pleases me,
this slow fading of known brain cells, because

it confirms that this dying brain is not what
I am, as I hang here waiting, KNOWING the word
I cannot quite catch the tail of, waiting as one
waits with swatter or cup for a fly to alight
on a cold window, waiting for this flit of knowing
to hold still long enough to be seized, waiting
for a word to arrive, no doubt by long labyrinthine
alternative nerve-pathways that by-pass ruined,
blasted cells — here I am suspended, knowing (but
unable to voice) what the brain refuses to
give me — THIS is the divine frustration, this

tip-of-the-self-ness, this certainty (even now
I can’t find the word for it), this knowing that
I damned well SHOULD know and DO know what persists
in remaining a total blank: It’s like looking
in the mirror and finding no reflection, this
hanging between knowing and data, this simple
knowing (here separated out for purest scrutiny)
that, spoiled by long reliance on brain gadgetry,
is at last of necessity coming to know itself.

–Dean Blehert