by Peter Schneider

Somewhere recently

I lost my short term memory.

It was there and then it moved

like the flash of a red fox

along a line fence.

My short term memory

has no address but here

no time but now.

It is a straight-man, waiting to speak

to fill in empty space

with name, date, trivia, punch line.

And then it fails to show.

It is lost, hiding somewhere out back,

a dried ragweed stalk on the Kansas prairie

holding the shadow of its life

against a January wind.

How am I to go on?

I wake up a hundred times a day.

Who am I waiting for,

what am I looking for

why do I have this empty cup

on the porch or in the yard?

I greet my neighbor, who smiles.

I turn a slow, lazy Susan

in my mind, looking for

some clue, anything to break the spell

of being lost in plain sight.