I Read A Book About Zazoo

I read a book about a girl named Zazoo

But maybe that girl was me.

She made poems as she rowed a boat in a canal

And watched for her sad gray cat

And thought about the war and how terrible the world is

"Take the bitter with the sweet."

She swam better than anyone

And skated when she could not swim

But most of all, she loved her grandfather

Even when he faded before her eyes.

I see my grandfather there

As real as the sad gray cat

And the row boat among the lily pads and the heron standing on one leg in the reeds

And the song of the wind as it sways the tops of the pines.

I skate though I do not swim

And I read poems about the world and how terrible it is

"Take the bitter with the sweet."

Mostly, life is good

And I drown in memories

Too complicated to explain, so fragile they might slip away

I miss my grandfather

So close and so easy to reach, but so many physical miles

Time and money get in the way

And school and our simple, naive minds.

But perhaps it is only nostalgia,

I long for when I was younger

Before he grew quiet and forgot easy things

When the tractor still worked instead of dribbling oil onto the newspaper on the floor

When the text of the story books was still large enough to see

When I was still small enough to listen.

Perhaps it is I who has changed

Or perhaps I am still here, a child inside my larger shell

Or perhaps the world just kept spinning 

Without bothering to pause.

And I did not realize all this time

Until I read a book about a girl who was a reflection of me.