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  • Absent-mindedness
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Absent-mindedness

Alison Prince

I am forgetting quite a lot these days.
My task-list is gap-toothed; it should run on
Like sequenced lights in a continuous phase
Of movement – but a good few bulbs have gone.

There are these sudden sleepings in my head;
I meant to buy some wine. I was to meet
That man at Johnstone station, but instead
Stood waiting outside Paisley Gilmour Street.

This, I suppose, is absent-mindedness.
Absence – an emptiness. And yet there seems
No space within my thought, and no distress
In finding duties overwhelmed by dreams.

My absent mind is filled with the delight
Of sweet horizons and the heron’s flight.


Alison Prince

from Having Been in the City (Taranis, 1994)

Reproduced by permission of Alison Prince.

Tags:

ageing dementia failing memory imagination
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Alison Princeb.1931

Alison Prince is a poet, and prize-winning writer for children, who lives and works on the Isle of Arran.
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