I love walking on Saturday mornings with our group as we weave our way around the quiet cemetery and I look forward to it every week. I love the companionship of each other as we talk of many things, catching up with all the minutiae of our lives that connect us to each other. And inevitably one of our conversations will go like this: I say - I read a great book recently and you say - Did you? What was it? And I say, I don't remember the name of it but it'll come to me. And you say, who was the author? And I say, British, I think, but maybe Canadian? You know, she writes so well. And you say, what's it about? And I say, I don't remember but it was really good! I'll email you with the name when I get home.
So, just so you all know we are not alone in asking Google for help...Here is a poem by Billy Collins
called: Forgotten
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue
or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.