I
With still a few minutes on my hands
I stop at the Salvation Army Thrift Store
on Strawberry Hill - my thoughts hovering around
an appointment at 2:45 - my hand drawn
unguided
to a book - which in that hand - turned into
a Chaucer reader I thumbed for a few seconds,
and then returned to the grotesque bins that
always depress me.
My appointment is with my physician, who
I disappointed by declining the cholesterol
medication he was taking himself, but who still
sees me, although he never knows why
until I arrive.
Against my ‘better judgment’ I take the "best yet"
Tom Wolfe - even better than the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
(if you can imagine that), and a literary collection from
Newfoundland that ends with outrage and controversy.
(You can write me for the details.)
Today, the annual blood work, and prostrate exam
(who would I be today if that was part
of a teen boys' work-up?)
three months late
(like trying every year to get an extra month
on the car inspection...)
...and the lump I can't see.
I'm not sure why I went back for Chaucer
although I think now that it was his voice,
the kind of voice that makes you turn
unconsciously - and that you never come
to regret.
the lump is on my lower back, where I can't see it
and the other day in the shower I dug
a piece of it off - fundamentalist surgical healing
under a tent in a tropical forest.
By leaving late for the appointment I spend
more time trying to stay alive and don't
think about it as much - if that makes sense.
Chaucer is listening to me, curiosity reincarnate.
I don’t remember the first time I carried on
both sides of a conversation but it was a hard conversation
that first started each of us talking to ourselves.
Today I’m three levels down, deep in a hard conversation with someone who (I believe) doesn't understand what I"m saying, where this started, how the sides could have become so hard, hardened, hardest.
I'd like to say that I don't remember anything
from then until the doctors voice, but that isn't true
I remember a lot. A man a little older going in the office
returning to fetch his wife and then the two of them leaving
without my looking up. I'm reluctant to make eye contact today,
afraid I read more into faces than books.
Chaucer is amazed by everything
the chairs and the window glass,
and even the green carpet that he kneels
down to rub his hand over and over,
repetition, repetition, rhythm and rhyme.
The doctors voice is a wheel in motion, a combine at night on the prairie
he has a real interest,
a passion for each number on my blood work, and “We're almost there...
almost to three's and fives.”
he's pleasantly unconcerned . . ... (while)
Chaucer and I sit trying to puzzle out the language.
I break the spell with the real reason I'm here, the lump,
the piece I tore off and threw yawa - his face changes.
This is language Chaucer understands! as I turn around
their faces disappear ...and then they're both talking
Chaucer recommends a poultice, the doctor concurs
and we're off again... “
Ah yes... the prostrate exam.”
The look on Chaucer's face is priceless.
Thank you, thank you, thanks again
and out the door.
Chaucer is really amazed.
II
Chaucer wants to stop
and talk to three Newfoundlanders
fishermen
sitting on the rail of a beached skiff
waiting for dinner
teasing a red haired girl called Donna
Donna
with the laughing eyes.
I don't want to stop today...
there's a car behind us.
an old beater with two women
who are engaged in loud and joyful
discourse
loud enough, and joyful enough
that Chaucer agrees.
