At that insightful moment in this wall-building exercise,
I flashed upon those muscles allowing me to pick up
the next stone, that moment of flex, contraction, and unflex,
before I actually grasped and lifted it, and smiling, thought,
“This must be the gift of foreseeing the future that age
gives old folks, that thing we acquire called wisdom”;
and reveling in this new talent, I missed the rock completely,
fell forward with tremendous momentum, slicing my forearm severely.
When the doctor asked what had happened, so seriously,
I joked that I had miss-seen the future and suffered an unexpected fate.
Observing me as if I might have hit my head as well, she told me
I’d require seven or eight stitches, to which I replied
I’d known that would be the case immediately after I fell,
having cut myself so many times in my life that I’d become
a good judge of severity levels, knew that this one would not heal
without the help of sutures, saw my body needing more and more
sewing together, like a Raggedy Andy doll in my declining years,
and at this she finally smiled, which I had hoped might happen.
Lanning Lee 