Nine on Tuesday
It’s nine o’clock on a Tuesday.
The patients just shuffle in
with oxygen tanks and walkers,
some in wheelchairs, hoping
for something better
for medical science
to keep them in one piece
to keep us alive and well.
Now, for some, is the time
of politics over health,
religion over medicine,
conspiracy over science.
I look around
and I say to myself,
man, what are you doing here?
It’s nine in the morning
and I am just one
of these people.
Another old fart
or flatulentess
getting a test to tell us
what we already know.
Some day this shit’s
gunna kill us,
if our own stupidity
and pride
fail to do it first.
It’s a lovely, sunny, cool day
here in Temple, Texas,
for wondering, Bill,
what are we doing here?
So, we sit and wait,
neither early nor late,
to have some clinician guide
say it has not gone away.
“If you stroke out,
give us a call, and
have a nice day.”
Look both ways.
Understand life backward but live it forward for as long as you can.
Mind the gaps for the fountain of youth, the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, and life everlasting. Amen.
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