The dentist’s wife,
not quite as evocative as the pilots wife.
They worked together
professional and assistant,
Mr and Mrs
husband and wife.
She always greeted people then took them in
and always called me Mr –
for 10 years,
until
one occasion when I was first appointment of the day –
7:30 a.m.
making small talk about the weather
asked how it was out there.
I replied it was raining when I left home but okay now
she wondered if I had been working all night
no, I always look like this first thing in the morning.
We both laughed
and after that she used my first name, never Mr.
Category: Passages
Passages: a volume of poems/short, short stories about the shifts and changes in perception and understanding as a function of time. How the stages of life reconfigure interpretation to reveal what was, isn’t any more. Or what is, once wasn’t. Vignettes of the metamorphosis : when the years of living render inaccessible to comprehension.
Orbit
We always knew one day it would happen
the Christmas card unacknowledged or
returned unopened.
Death after all is inevitable,
follows an inverted bell curve
falling with the shedding of youth and exuberance
then rising with age
and at 89…..
Symmetry :
we were newly together
in our early 20’s,
she in her late 50’s
a brush passing, two evenings in budget accommodation
but somehow we connected
corresponding for 35 years.
We visited her when up North
she called in when South.
Her daughter returned the card with a note.
her mother had died that year aged 89,
on holiday in the tropics,
had always said she wanted one, or the other
and having got both, would be happy she said.
When sadness yielded, we did the maths –
we were now the same age she had been when we met.
Sanctions
It happened 20 years before and
the man who told me, remembered
as an adjunct or preface
to the funeral senior staff were attending.
A fellow, 10 or 11 years retired,
before my time, but emeritus distinguished –
name still spoken with reverence
good at her job and a stickler, but
drank a lot he said,
then, cut the cards and showed the joker,
“ killed a guy one night – drunk driving ”
***&^^*
Realms and rulers
alcohol was king, queen and emperor then
misfortune as a result of, seen as ……. misfortune :
bad luck,
shit happens
especially this one apparently,
impairment’s trifecta – poor visibility and raining
crap timing – almost home.
No shame: no stigma,
“came back to work a couple of days later as if
nothing happened
turning to understanding and sympathy
imagine that today.”
Orphaned Islands (Un)poetry 