adam barricklow

Writing the Poem I Will Write On My 40th Birthday

It is strange reminiscing about my trip to Italy now, just completed 12 years into the future, it being, of course, no simple task trying to remember points in time where your feet have yet to take you.

Though I do recall fumbling exchange rates, paying too much for a camera to take a picture of myself with my wife, full tourist grins in front of a building with a history more noble than ourselves.

I should make note now that the hotel is just around the block from the market that I purchased fresh olives and grapes, though there is something to be said about being lost in a city such as Venice.

And I will take the time now, to thank the waiters at every restaurant we visited, for understanding that when I said, in my Italian mastered from books on tape, 'May I pet your dog', it meant steak medium rare.

Part of me worries about robbing my 40-year old self of the future poems, and admits that he could probably do them more justice, but later this afternoon I plan on writing about the fishing trip I will take three years from now.

And tomorrow I will continue to submerge myself into the future, stealing poems not yet ready for harvest, ones that can't be replaced, and push forward through the afternoon without a worry about my poetryless future.