Mostly I write poetry and when I revisit certain poems,
I sometimes say to myself, “I don’t even remember writing that!”
As I get older, this seems to be happening more often,
which makes me wonder if it’s age related.
Even memories of places I’ve been and things I’ve done
seem to get murkier and murkier especially if they happened
more than a year previously.
Experiences I had as a young man seem as if another young man–
impersonating some of my worst aspects– did those things,
and to recall myself as a child is like watching a home movie
in which I wince and feel embarrassment for the poor kid.
I completely understand the part of that nursery rhyme
that professes that ‘life is but a dream,’ and in my case
much of it was a bad one, from which all I wanted to do was wake up
and be somewhere else. . .
Written By: Jeffrey Zable
Jeffrey Zable is a teacher and conga drummer who plays Afro-Cuban folkloric music for dance classes and Rumbas around the San Francisco Bay Area.
His poetry, fiction,and non-fiction have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and anthologies. Recent writing in Hypnopomp, Ink In Thirds, Nauseated Drive, Tigershark, After The Pause, Third Wednesday, Brushfire, Smoky Blue, Alba, Greensilk, Corvus, and many others. In 2017 he was nominated for both The Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.