Written for Shay’s Word Garden (Cathy Day)
You painted an elephant on my wrist towing a Winnebago and said “this fucking circus” as weetbix dribbled down your chin. You were ninety five and your knuckles had ballooned with arthritis so big it seemed impossible that science could exist inside the limitations of a joint. We liked to remember the day we'd cut the roof off your gold Oldsmobile and planted sunflowers in the footwells and nasturtiums in the seat stuffing while Cole Porter oozed between hash cookies and cigarette smoke. As it all grew, you called it your money garden and we made you a papier-mâché coronet, crowned you king of Podunk. Why not? You boasted you’d made misery immortal, that you had the ashes of your tears in a charm on the anklet you bought in India when Buddha was a boy. You always made jokes like that about your age, counted your wrinkles like they were circus tricks. You once painted an elephant as weetbix dribbled down your chin and you said "this fucking circus", Your last words before the stroke took your voice away. A swing of life’s trapeze and a hole in the safety net. When you fell it was me that broke even while the circus swept on.
Out of the Cave 
😢
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The tenderness for the old man (I’m assuming it’s a man) and the grief at his ruin moved me. You used the List words quite deftly, and the Oldsmobile in the poem put me in mind of a couple of places here in the USA. One is called Carhenge and it is a replica of England’s Stonehenge but built with old junk cars painted gray. It’s in Nebraska. The other is called Cadillac Ranch and it’s all these old Cadillacs buried nose first in the ground and sticking up. You can spray paint a message on them if you want. That one is in Texas. Anyway, it’s a heart-wrenching thing, what you describe here, a feisty, independent old bird outliving his body’s ability to carry on.
–Shay
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richly imagined; celebratory and sad; the first few lines got me in; the ease of the narrative took over after that —
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Thanks, John. The words took me on a journey this week, like your packet of cookies.
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hahaha; good comparison; an enjoyable journey, Worms 🙂
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This is one amazing poem Jo! Stunning imagery that opens the eyes and the heart all at once. As Shay so wonderfully said, your use of the words is brilliant. This really moved me and I think is a new favorite for me of yours!!!
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Thanks so much, Carrie for your lovely and generous moment!
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