In Absentia

Is this part of aging, noticing all that isn't there, unseen plots being hatched in my body, vacant eyes, unfinished symphonies, the missing tooth and empty chair?

All those shadows we're chasing in caves and cave walls. The big one that never was in Iraq and the lives lost looking. Envelops undelivered in the Dead Letter office. Unlived lives.

Interval between the noise. The T.V. announcer at the ball game who knows enough to be silent. If you have nothing say the very least you can do is shut up. (Tom Lehrer). The elongated pause that loses out to the blurt.

Groucho topples power with cigar and raised eyebrow. Harpo communes with heaven and releases the stars. Chico asks how much you pay me if you don’t buy it.

Factories chained. Windows gone. Baseball bubblegum cards vanished with skate keys and football needles. Ink eradicator. Runner rubbed out stealing second.

The disappeared. Bones in mass graves. Europe irrigated with centuries of blood. Imbecilic wars and unrecorded genius we'll never know. Ground zero.

How my mother used to say, I never heard of such a thing. All that she never....

The space between that makes the music. …and nothin’s plenty for me. Melodies we mourn for when toes tapped. Rhythms and rhymes of life, the fundamental things of, gone by; remember you must. Absense that makes the heart grow.

Punctuation (comma) where art thou? Infinitives and participles splitting and dangling. Sentences I end prepositions with. i no longer follows e except after c. Rules, like rulers, overthrown.

All the incomprehensible words we live with. Derivatives, which do not exist, the untraceable bundling of mortgages; and what is a billion or trillion anything? Unanswered questions and unquestioned answers.

On a something note. Bulbs have sprung with their spectrum of colors. Daffodil and tulip, unrhymed poems filled with ellipsis and Peggy's presence in the next room.