The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Wed 1/7/2009)

[RetroLounge]

My Father Adjusts His Hearing Aids

Once again my old man has gutted his hearing aids.
On the table beside him, around the smallest blade of his pocket knife,

his hearing aids lay scattered like the scrutinized guts of bugs.
Somewhere in those parts—the coils, the discs,

the blue copper veins—somewhere in that chaos lies the riddle
of sound. Now in the dark kitchen he faces the window

where the first stars tremble in the branches of his oaks.
The house is as quiet as a broken watch.

He knows the score—nothing will ever be
repaired again, nothing will ever work as it did. The dumb wind

says as much, and the needles raining in the yard.
The silence around his shoulder is my mother's arm.

David Bottoms

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:hi:

RL

[blueraven95]

1. ...

:(




:hi:

[RetroLounge]

5. ...

:hi:

RL

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Good morning, my dear Retro!

Ah, beautiful, if a bit sad...

The realities of growing old...poetically...

Thank you!

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

6. ...

:hi:

RL

[InternalDialogue]

3. Fantastic emotion in just a few words.

Beautiful and sad.

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

7. ...

:hi:

RL

[Chorophyll]

4. Whew.

That last line... chills. Very beautiful.

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

8. agreed...

:hi:

RL

[Xipe Totec]

9. I have a friend who wondered why the crickets had grown silent

They had not.

I sat with him once, learning Masonic ritual "mouth to ear", and his cell phone started buzzing.

No reaction.

The ring tone was too high for his ears to register.

It sounded like crickets.

I told him his phone was ringing, and he seemed surprised.

He took the call; he could hear the voices on the phone, but not the ring tone.

That's when he realized just how much of his hearing he had lost already.

He wondered out loud, why he had stopped hearing crickets at night.

He was a machinists.

[RetroLounge]

10. ...

:hi:

RL