Janet Ruth
oojah
As I grow older, loss of proper nouns becomes more frequent. Starting out confidently, I stride along a sentence. But right in the middle I stop—I’ve lost the word. It’s like swaying along a rope suspension bridge high above a tumbling river. I abruptly come upon an open space where once there was a board to step on. Now there is—nothing—a gap. And it’s a long way down. Halted, looking across to where I was going when I started this sentence, I can’t figure out how to get there. There had been something brilliant, or at least useful, to say but now it’s lost. D pulls on his ear, Yes? . . . small word . . . sounds like . . . But allusions to charades are not funny. Exasperated, I reach deep for a plank-substitute . . .
memory leads the herd to a waterhole old matriarch
Note: oojah (etymology unknown) /ˈuːdʒɑː/: some useful little device which doesn’t have a name, or something which does have a proper name but which you’ve temporarily forgotten; a thingumabob, doohickey, or whatchamacallit. Old-fashioned British English slang from World War I. Also, the name of an elephant character in comic strips and children’s stories in the first half of the twentieth century.
About the Author
Janet Ruth is a New Mexico ornithologist whose writing focuses on her connections with nature. She has recent poems in Scarlet Dragonfly Journal, Prune Juice, cattails, Cold Moon Journal, and Tandem: The Rengay Journal. Her first book, Feathered Dreams: celebrating birds in poems, stories & images (Mercury HeartLink, 2018), was a finalist for the 2018 NM/AZ Book Awards. redstartsandravens.com