If I Should Die Some Tuesday... Poem by Frank Avon

What I hate for the world to lose
is all the things I have learned,
all the things that I've been through,
what my mind has stored away in urns,

in little suitcases, in file cabinets,
in the pockets of pool tables,
among tree limbs, inside fishing nets,
in its silo, its garage, its horse stables.

What I hate for the world to lose
are all those things that I remember,
songs, psalms, adages, jokes, clues,
what happened every year, each December,

but (alas) , the final loss is not the first,
for already, every day, I lose something else:
words I can't recall, folks' names (that's the worst) ,
how a movie ended, scores, when to take my pills,

how long a line should be,
when a poem should rhyme,
whether it's trite to say, 'I see, '
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME

How I hate for the world to lose,
what I've already lost,
all the things... now I was saying what?

Uh, I forgot.