Forgetfulness (Billy Collins)

It is so light, this poem by Billy Collins. To forget such trivial school-based things like the quadratic formula, "a state flower perhaps,/the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay" seems like no big deal. I mean, flip if I know my uncle's address.

But it took serious attention and time to craft this poem, so I doubt that Billy really believes his forgetfulness to be so trivial. The stanzas are all different lengths. 5332344. There is no pattern to that. It makes me uneasy. I want to find some logic to those numbers. But there is none, like there is none when it comes to what one remembers and what one forgets. There is no order as one gets older. No progression - you may even, one day, forget "how to swim and how to ride a bicycle." And once you have forgotten the trades of youth, you might as well finish your slide away.

Favorite line: "even now as you memorize the order of the planets,/something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps"