|
Thoughts of an Aging Man
with a hand tremor
While Trimming His Beard
1. John Irving's teen-age hero
in a Widow for One Year
has sex with his boss's wife
60 times in a two-month period
and I remember a week ago
the struggle to orgasm just once
over a pornographic picture
of a lovely young woman
named Alyssa
2. My last ex-wife's grandchildren
grow up and I fear the loss of them to
all the things
kids fall heir to in puberty
and wonder how much longer
do we have together, these
two girls now 12 and 13
and their hyperactive brother
of 10 who have held my life
together these past nine years
since my divorce, our monthly
Sunday lunches and movies,
first with just the girls
and later their brother too
3. My friends diminish by death
and argument, and life
narrows down routines so
deadly necessary I wonder
why I bother with them so doggedly
as if doing so only
separates me from
some other kind of death
4. The day last week
I washed my kitchen floor
with Pine Sol, rubbed it dry
and mopped it over with
Mop and Glow, and when
that dried poured myself a glass
of cranberry juice, which when
I turned to get the Metamucil
knocked over with an elbow
and shattered into
the sink and the disposal
and all over the fucking floor
5. Two daughters and a son,
the older daughter I haven't seen
in almost 30 years and a son
and daughter by another mother
who were here
for their grandmother's death
three years ago, an email now and then
from India or Oakland ,
a phone call to San Luis Obispo
and pictures of kids I'll
never meet, grandkids
whose birthdays I cannot recall
6. My sister, Sis, whom I've called
Gloria maybe six or seven times
in my entire life is a truly loving,
caring and often annoying
woman with her sound
but repetitive advice,
and so I seldom see or talk to her
but I am lost when she is
out of town, as she often is
in her husband's motor home,
alone without family
7. On Friday nights I celebrate
myself with a marijuana cookie
and two stiff glasses of Glenfidditch
and wonder why I gave up
dope and drinking any other nights
six years ago, one of those
almost dull routines, the doing of,
I guess, so separates me from
that final narrowing
of routines
8. My beard is trimmer, neater,
for some reason than the rest
of my life, and after all these years
it bores me almost as much
Dick Sanders
***************
:hi:
RL
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
