Senescent - edit 2

[milo]

Senescence Blank


My mind is going, going
but I feel it only when
it’s gone.  Just in
these last three days
I rediscovered three words
lost for hours that
had been inaccessible
not found by even
alphabetic search
and prompting when their
concepts needed names–

snare: I could not express
how rabbits are caught
when my grand-nephew wished
to trap a leprechaun
only make pulling motions
with my fingers

Kurds: (just had to alphabet
again) when discussing
their place in Iran,
their aspiration
to be a nation

and Etruscans: wondered
how they related
to Sea Peoples of
a YouTube documentary
(and just had to find
them now, minutes later
yet again by way
of “Tuscany”)

How much of my mind
my vaunted vocabulary
is gone this present moment
hidden or erased
absence unremarked
senescence-walled forever?

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This is pretty raw, from a succession of unnerving experiences (of being "at a loss for words").  I expect the first suggestion will be to remove the examples.  Almost a journal entry... worth editing?

Like everyone else, I am going to comment on your comment instead of the poem:

I think the examples are important and the best part in many ways.  I think you limit yourself by forcing your narrator to live the same experience as the author(you).  For me, it would make sense to choose 3 examples that will al point to your theme or central metaphor and then fill in the details using as much rich language as you feel does it justice.  Now this doesn't say that your current examples couldn't or don't work, I just wanted to comment on the process and the potential.

Also, I would switch the title to Senescent but that could just be a personal preference.

Does it have potential?  Absolutely - you are rooting around for the metaphor and I think you might want to decide more firmly what that is.

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and just a follow-up: snare - definitely keep that one - it is a perfect double meaning for someone 'snared' by their own mind