Update on My All Consuming Fear

I rode the Thomson trail this afternoon after work and I got there late enough so that I wouldn't be the first person in the woods. I wasn't the second or the third or even the fourth. If I counted right, I was the 7th in the woods but the 9th person to ride by the corner where we found Mr. Rattlesnake sunning himself yesterday. Dave and Diana had already told me that they'd scoped that corner out well on their first lap and not seen him, although they admitted that they did that from on top of their bikes. Huh..they could have missed him all coiled up and hiding just waiting for the unsuspecting rider, but I decided to be brave and risk it. When I got to that spot, I went around that corner so fast you would have mistaken me for a Le Mans car. I also made sure that Diana and Dave went ahead of me cause my daddy always told me that snakes get the second person in line, not the first.

Look, I love Diana and Dave a lot, but even friendship of that magnitude has its limits. They were very brave and awesome and selfless and get all sorts of good karma points while I? Not a good person. I admit it. Back to clubbing baby seals in my next life because of the shortcomings in this one. Damn snake. Speaking of the damn snake,
no snake sightings anywhere tonight. The trails may be safe, but constant vigilance is still the buzz phrase of the week.

Poetry! Because it's been too long:

Forgetfulness

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,
not 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.

Billy Collins