MY RESERVOIR, a poem

My reservoir of words

of English with smatterings

of French, German, Italian,

and Spanish with bits

of Farsi and Arabic

available at my call

throughout my life

were collected from parents

from school, from books, from films

from conversations, from theater

from dictionaries and thesauruses

          The right word, the right phrase

          flowed at will

          into my novels, poems, articles

and conversations

then old age struck

The wanted words

slow in coming

or even blocked

by feeble recall

My reservoir remains full

but difficult to access