Monday, January 11, 2010

Compensation

I'd like you to meet Malcolm,
we'll visit for a while, his day
begins after breakfast, at the piano,
if we're lucky Chopin or Schumann
pieced like a fine cabinet in progress
so please don't expect a concert,
you might pack a Field and Stream,
he'll pass out needles and we'll sit
around his quilt frame and talk,
stitching bucks and bears on camouflage,
bring your boots for a mountain jaunt,
then we might knead bread and read
Clancy, DeMille, Thoreau or Dickens,
when he'll mention it's not easy being Malcolm
among Johns, Toms, Bills and Dicks.


"Are you reading thrillers again?" Virginia asks, flexing her biceps.

"How'd you guess?" I say.  "Every now and then it's important to remember who I could have been."

"You'd have been a lousy 'secret agent man,'" she says.

"Hmmm."  I bite my tongue.

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