I\'ll Always Remember What\'s-Her-Name
Charles Harper Webb
“I must be losing my mind,” Betty says.
She bought a lime-green blouse at Bullocks’,
went to hang it in her closet, and found
an identical blouse already there.
She’s 70, afraid Alzheimer’s creeping near.
How many times, though, have I told my wife
about finding box turtles purple-headed
from dewberries, or hooking a tarpon
from Padre Island pier? How often
do I rent movies it turns out we’ve seen?
How many men keep marrying the same
blonde strangler, not noticing, behind
the colored wigs and curvy keisters, Mom?
Novelists rewrite the same book all their lives,
using the same sentence constructions,
misspelling the same words. Freud spoke about
the “repetition compulsion.” Many times.
What can we do except enjoy our new red shirts
our four-wheel drives, blue Stainmaster
carpets, top-of-the-line graphite flyrods
with which maybe we’ll finally snag a fish?
Why shouldn’t we bless our lives abundance
and our hopeful hearts, opening closets
stuffed with identical shirts and rugs
and rods and trucks and lime-green blouses
sure to catch the fire in dyed auburn hair?
