Day 26-ish: The Astonishing Wonder of the Forty-Year-Old Mind

Poem:

The Astonishing Wonder of the Forty-Year-Old Mind

At fifteen the male mind sharpens,

focuses on every word

to find tangential sex jokes.

After this we broaden

(though sex jokes linger,

couched in our brain center

like the flower’s stigma,

surrounded by pretty petals

but lingering at the core),

until at forty the brain

is no longer the flower

but the bees.

It darts in every direction

to pollinate the meadow,

at once recalling nectar in  

high school locker combinations

and the first warm squish of lips

on my lips twenty-five years ago,

the meaning of res ipsa loquitur

and the lurch of a world that stopped

spinning the days my sons emerged.

And yet, amid the swarming,

it skips the occasional daisy,

found again when I stumble upon

a novel, three days lost,

nestled gently atop the string cheese

at the bottom of the refrigerator

while the front edge of my hair

climbs back on its expedition

to locate my misplaced glasses.

 

Commentary:

 

I often marvel at the mind's ability to recall arcane facts and nuances of life experience, while failing to hold on to something like why I've left one room to enter another.  Aging can be a beautiful, maddening experience.

 

This poem takes on this constant contradiction, playing between the flowers and the bees in a meadow, touching on detailed memories and everyday slips of mind.  The movement of the poem, through youth to age, intentionally incorporates attaining and slipping of memories not as separate effects, but as two aspects of the same process.