At the New Jewish Home for the Aged
man who had a recent thyroidectomy
he wants to write poems
about his thyroidectomy he asked me to tell him
what my poems are about and my first answer
was You. He said what did you write about
before my thyroidectomy and I told him that
when I was a child I wrote about my neighbors
Ida G who confessed she did not love her husband
(Dull said Ida) and my neighbor on the other side
Julia C. Steele a librarian who fell in love
with a married woman and they drove to Mexico
and she sent me a postcard saying Come and Visit
and I saved her postcard for years and the man
across the street from us in the country who didn’t
cross the street for 28 years until his wife
died and he walked over to tell us he loved her
and we invited him to dinner and he smoked
a cigarette and said he only
ate meat and potatoes and we looked like
vegetable types and I said no salad
and he said You Got That Right.
People are endlessly interesting!
love this poem
life is so quirky and unexplainable...