Lately I’ve had trouble staying in my mind,
like when I’m driving with my daughter
and she’s calling out the colors of cars
passing the other way on the highway
while I’m trying to sort out something
that refuses to stay sorted.

She pops with colors like a night sky
on the Fourth of July: “Blue car. Red car.
White car. Another white car,”
and just when her observations merge
with the rest of traffic
and blend into the background,
just when I was finally getting somewhere,
she screams my name and asks
if I can find any orange cars—

a duty which I embark on
by observing the oncoming stream
before they pass and appear in
my rearview mirror, because I
can’t afford to keep looking back.