Santa Amnesia
Last week, my father’s birthday slid past
unnoticed. It was also his death
-day and the anniversary of my first marriage
so you’d think I’d remember. I confess
I have tried my best to forget
that godforsaken anniversary
but cannot, linked irreversibly as it is
to my father’s parentheticals
which seem important to remember
like the names of the capitals, saints, winter birds.
They say this is how it starts, the wrestling
with the days of the week, proper nouns.
I would like to know just who they are
so we might have a word or two.
Preferably without nouns.
Time drifts, a boat without sails.
Memory mills about like the unemployed
waiting for a good day’s labor.
Blessed Mother, is this the beginning of l’oublie?
Will I remember the faces of my children?
I can see my birds are leaving their branches.
Must I rely on dreams now to lead me
to warmer climes? Even in dreams
I have forgotten what she looked like
so that’s something. Her eternal twenty
-ness, the eager curl of her smile, her eyes
in which so little could hide
the whole sprawling mural of her
a sketch now: charcoal lines, smudges.
What time has done.
There’s a mercy in there somewhere
if only I could find it.
……
This poem first appeared in MORIA and was nominated for a 2025 Pushcart Prize. The poem is from the chapbook Lately by Charles S. Cobean (Finishing Line Press) at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/lately-by-charles-s-cobean/
Charles S. Cobean is the second son of a Cold War submarine captain and moved from base to base throughout his youth. He was educated at Vanderbilt and UCLA, and has had poems placed in publications such as Rattle, MORIA, Poets Online, Western Humanities Review, Poem, Jacaranda Review, Aura, Brownstone Poets Anthology, Sense & Sensibility, Fixed and Free Quarterly, Cumberland Poetry Review, and others. One of his poems was nominated for a 2025 Pushcart Prize.
The Paddock Review 