poem

 CursiveOld mom sent me a card for Father ’s DayShe never does that, how nice!Telling me she ’s proud of meHow good of a dad I am,  She ’s sweet.She used to write so beautifullyIn a lovely looping cursive scriptThat ought to be its own font.You could wear her written wordsAs jewelry or decorate your kitchen curtains With complex repeating patternsOf herDear Jeffs andLove Moms. She ’s older now and her hand shakes a bitAnd that elegant penmanship Yaws with a tremored wobbleLike a dodgy arterial line tracing.It makes me sad, how all beauty Eventually begins to tremble,Quivering down to asystole.I still have the book she gaveMe for Christmas when I was sixteen —Shakespeare ’s Complete Works, The inside cover filled with an inscriptionShe had carefully writtenIn her humble middle class calligraphyTelling me the best was yet to come.I used to think her writingWas the prettiest thing about her.I should have paid more attention, I guess.I ’m sure there were other ways she was beautifulSo many ways I must have missed.Life is full of illusions.I ’m always getting disabused Of this notion or that.Even words lose elasticityFlatten out into rigid meanings Or oscillate into wavy split endsPlucked and flicked into the ether. I have always exclusively printedIn a sharp angular chicken scratch,Slashing into the paperWith a sequence of marks and dashes, Fast and mechanical and perfunctory.Above all I wanted to be unde...
Source: Buckeye Surgeon - Category: Surgery Authors: Source Type: blogs