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 Jun 2017 Willard Wells
Mary-Eliz
She's younger than me
She's just eighty-three
but you'd think she's
a hundred and ten.
She talks of her aches.
She talks of her pains.
Then she tells them all over again.

She wins all the "prizes"..
She likes to advise us
on all the troubles she has
like sun-burning too easy
and how she gets queasy,
flat feet, sinus problems and gas!

She has all of these plus
she's weak in the knees.
Her heart sometimes beats out of time.
The bugs like her better.
She says they all get her.
Her bites swell the size of a dime.
(Actually, a quarter but it didn't rhyme.)

She has trouble sleeping.
She has trouble eating.
Some foods they give her the hives.
To hear when she tells it,
she isn't so well. It's a wonder
she's even alive.

Too healthy am I.
I can't even try
to keep up with the conversation.
The ante's too much.
Her ails I can't touch.
I've not even had operations.

She has, you know, from
her head to her toe.
They've taken out pieces and parts.
She keeps them in jars.
They're never too far
to be shown at a game of hearts.

When she whips out her stones
and pieces of bones,
we just smile and then nod our heads.
She knows she's the winner and
we're just beginners.
"Hey, can't we talk about
the weather instead?"
My two sisters and I used to spend a week together at a beach house. I had to leave a conversation with them one time because I couldn't stand to listen to their (hypochondriac) complaints and woes another minute. I went in the other room and wrote this...later when I read it to them, they laughed but they didn't really"get it"!! Of course, I exaggerated a bit...including the age :-) but still...(On the other hand, perhaps each of them thought it was about the other! LOL)
I am made of water

I first learnt it when, at age 13
I dropped a glass of it
And it trickled through my veins
As my father told me he didn’t know why he loved me

After that, every day I was kissed by sunlight
I shimmered
Like a pond lost in a forest of
Thought that no one visited

I used to look at my hands and wonder
Why I could see right through
The sinew
And bone
Into translucent fluid bubbling
Where blood red should be

But whenever someone deigned to hold
My shaking digits, I felt the cold
Of my insides freezing us both
Eventually, when they could no longer hold
My icy arms,
They let go
On their way to greener pastures

Then I would melt
Seek the sun,
Weep for joy at the torrents inside me
That flowed again

You cannot touch this liquid life
Unless your fingers are blessed by a burning
Unlike anything before or after you,

I long to simmer in a scalding embrace,
You whom I have yet to meet,
You who will boil my insides until
One day,
I disappear
Like a pond dried up in summer,
Its filaments caressing the sun,
Lost forever to the world below

Until after years,
I will rain again on gardens
That men will worship
And whose beauty,
(Nourished by a love that no one knows),
Will enshrine our embrace for generations
Nights encroachment is changing the face of town ,
an orange star phasing out ,
the borough is closing down
The elderly are content from front porches
the children called to dinner ,
bicycles , baseball bats and chalk are left
on the ground ,
the sound of buses and semis , the last train
headed south
Artificial light slowly filtering out
She's slowly , methodically , shutting down
Copyright March 16 , 2017 by Randolph L Wilson * All Rights Reserved
Some say the lights that fly by my
window are cars
I say they're E.T's come from afar , navigating State Highways ,
plotting the eventual take over of Hill Country
byways
Counting every house , curiously watching the cattle ,
young colts in mock battle , a braying mule
at the Tilson's Farm , a turkey hen in feathered charms
Maybe they've discovered that dried up still on Camp Creek
Or run up on Papas liquor bottles behind the 'bee-keeps'
Checking out the jeans and bloomers on Mama's clothesline
Or drinking Uncle Preachers muscadine wine way before it's time* ..
Copyright February 5 , 2017 by Randolph L Wilson * All Rights Reserved
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