Posted in Chutzpah

Diagnosis

Posted on by tq1695

Everyone in the district said old Bill would see 100
almost, 103 actually.
Old Bill – reverse mathematics deducts years : 77
his age when I first heard the descriptor –
always old Bill,
like Big Ben
or Tricky Dicky
or Dirty Harry.
Old Bill
cantankerous
iconoclastic
successful
and iron willed.

About 80 his heart was causing some gyp
… not responding to medication.
His doctor said, give it time,
have faith in your pills.
Old Bill said, “ I want a doctor not a bloody faith healer,”
threw the medication away
and lived to tell the tale – for another 23 years.

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Author:

Most of my life has been spent on the bench, occasionally called into the game by extravagance or attenuation. Waiting has turned a loner into a recorder - nondescript and inconsequential, more not noticed than overlooked - the non-vantage point of children not yet considered old enough to understand. Orphaned Islands (Un)poetry is a lifetime of picking anecdotes up and not throwing them away. Stories collected like odds and ends placed in a box in the basement, the garage, the garden shed - uncertain as to what their use might be but knowing that one day there might be one.