What
the Body Does to Us in Time
by
Norbert Krapf
Where
does all the pain come from?
Those
knobs at the base of the thumbs
that
pulse and make it hard to open
anything
screwed tight. And those noises
the
shoulder joints make when we lift
our
arms? The dimming of our eyes
and
the disappearance of moisture
in
them that once lubricated vision?
Those
rude noises that more easily
escape
the apertures we’d rather
not
name? And what about those
names
that escape us so easily now?
I
mean even of people we still know
we
like. Oh and those appointments
we
are obliged to keep, who wrote them
down
in such illegible script on the wrong
days
or not at all anywhere? And the sweet
flowers
we have loved so long, why can’t
they
be polite enough to whisper their
euphonious
names in our wide-open ears?
And
love, why do we so seldom understand
what
the other is saying and become irritated
by
the irascible and too-loud word What?
Why
do our vowels still speak but consonants
drop
out of range so quickly though we strain
to
hear their sounds? Why must you have
your
eyes and I my ears checked so often
as
operatives we took for granted for so many
years
but have so quickly and shockingly gone
goodbye?
Why am I struggling to remember
what
I’m trying to say? Who gave me the gift
of
forgetting so much so easily as fast as this?
Norbert
Krapf's latest collections are The Return of Sunshine
(2018) and Indiana Hill Country Poems (2019). His adaptation
of his Catholic Boy Blues collection (2015) into a play was
performed in June in the Indy Eleven Theatre of Indy Fringe, and he
is currently working on a new play, Andrew and the Bells of Lohr.