ManicDDaily

What We Can’t Swallow  (Bitter Pills/Politics)

When my father was old and ill,
he could not swallow pills
well.
Even the pieces I cut
to speck size, souped
with applesauce,
stuck.
After finger-digging
some neon morsel
from between the rawer
pink of gum and lip (the bit where humans
evolved from bivalves) for
the eighth time (he, scowling
at the bitter trail),
I’d get frustrated, almost
mad,
and might even have given up
or castigated,
but for the background play
of Big Bands,
his yarn-blue eyes, and perhaps most importantly,
some tuning of my inner ear to the
reverberation of unkindness, that bit
(evolved from prey) that
instinctively ducks the rebound,
boomerang and karmic ka-ching, a
sensor of pendulum swing that
kept me adjusting the volume of
both applesauce and Glenn Miller,
till the pill-specks all
got down.

It’s that same part of me, breathless and increasingly
dry-mouthed,
as I walk uphill today, my joints
all waving hello,
that wonders how it is that greed
cannot see
its self-interest;
how those politicians/people
urging the further squeeze of the sick,
the elderly, the working poor and poorer, in favor of
the more-er and more-er,
can be so cock-sure that they will not also
some day
have a bitter pill
to swallow, one that the past greasing of
palms may not
lubricate.

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I’m posting the above for dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night.  Check out dVerse and also (from my main page) my books!  poetry, GOING ON SOMEWHERE, (by Karin Gustafson, illustrated by Diana Barco). 1 Mississippi -counting book for lovers of rivers, light and pachyderms, or Nose Dive, a very fun novel that is perfect for a pool or beachside escape.