Bob King

Everything We’ve Taken the Time to Learn, We’ll Eventually Forget

The scientific theories, universal equations,
recipes, driving directions, sports statistics,
and I’ve never been good with names anyway.
The brand of chocolate you prefer, the exact
amount of feathery pressure you enjoy from
my body part to your body part. Or foreign
vocabulary hastily scribbled on now-well-worn
index cards, and dead white dudes who wrote
XYZ and in which order; geologic time stamps,
thousands of song lyrics and opening piano notes,
gods and generals and criminals and heroes,
as if any of us can be one-word defined. And
what’re the names of that new young couple
who bought the Smith’s house down the block?
The neighborhood’s really turning over. And
“i” before “e” except after “c,” birthdays
and anniversaries, and what you came into this
room in the first place for because your glasses
are atop your head and you’re holding your
phone; no, I haven’t seen your keys, but breathe,
and did you unplug the iron before you left?
Did you lock the back door? Why did you start
with him in the first place? Why you left.
Why you forgave. What you chose not to.
That the plot is one-part events, two-parts
the why they happened. Cynicism and
sarcasm and inside jokes and superstitions
and little stitions and Jeopardy categories
of all your so-called expert areas. All gone.
Gonzo. Sayonara. How to login, remember,
think, walk, act, lie, dream, distill water,
start a fire, fight germs, hide, hunt, eat, breathe.
Poof, like slowly, sweetly sifted powdered
sugar atop Grandma’s Famous French Toast.
In neat little dust piles congealed in butter pools.
As if dry yet misty fallen constellations. Star
charts of everything you once knew that no
member of any genus or species will ever
remember exactly as you did. If you’re lucky,
those preserved ashy clumps will remain
on the floor of the satin-lined box in the dirt
near the crabapple with the pair of Northern
Cardinals over on the back hill of the cemetery
boundary, and after your last grandkid kicks,
no one will ever visit again, grave marker
or not. Yes, in less than 26,000 days—
25,000, 24,000, 23,000, 22, 21, 20, 19—
tick tick tick—you’ll have no more days.
And likely 75 years after that, no one will
remember your days or name or the small
philosophical wars your privilege allows
you to wage, like your irritation at your
species’ inability to park neatly between
the lines in the grocery store lot. But this
doesn’t mean you don’t allow yourself
to wonder. To wonder and to soak up
wonder, those little moments that leave
your jaw hanging slack like some dumb
ape because suddenly you almost can’t
stand the beauty from thank-god-another
sunrise. This is going to be a good day.
You’ll make present tense present. You’ll
slow down. For now, you’ll slow down and
stay right here because the meaning is inside
the process. It always has been.

Bob King is an Associate Professor of English at Kent State University at Stark. He holds degrees from Loyola University Chicago (BA, English, 1995) and Indiana University (MFA, Poetry, 1998). His poetry has appeared in American Poetry Review, Allium: A Journal of Poetry and Prose, Narrative Magazine, The Cleveland Review, Cooweescoowee, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Sycamore Review, Sonora Review, Northwest Review, Hawai’i Review, Quarter After Eight, and Green Mountains Review, among other magazines. He lives on the outskirts of Cleveland with his wife and daughters.