That strange old man, he came today
he knelt in a peculiar way
the toes uncurled and sliding out
I wondered if he had the gout.
He has the bloated whiskry throat
the eyes that swim and peer and float
and when he doesn't have to pee
I think that he's in love with me.
It's odd that knobby hands that shake
can be so deft and wide awake:
pare the film from off his mind
and you could swear that he was kind.
That was when I decided I wanted a tattoo. When the woman in the ICU I helped care for, during nursing school, disappeared beneath lines and fluid edema, but her Joe Camel tattoo kept her real for me. A tough broad with a wild past and a big heart.
ReplyDeleteA whole life, stories and jokes, still there. The unmarked can only barely imagine, guess at.
I love your rhyming poetry, Dale. :)
ReplyDelete:-) what a wonderfully unexpected response, Zhoen! I think I've just understood tattoos in a totally different way.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much, Kristen! My rhyming poems take an entirely different path to getting on the page -- it feels like a very different activity than writing the nonrhyming stuff.
Your subject just seemed to be oozing with stories and experience, however illegible. Which elicited this memory.
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