Lovesick – a poem

Original photo from www.photos-public-domain.com, graphic created by Brenda Sullivan

We walked the brook

behind the trees behind the house

that was the property line,

not three feet wide where widest,

trilling with a languid lisp.

Stooping under whipping branches,

stepping over stumps,

stumbling to stay a step ahead,

pointing to splintered limbs,

debris, mown grass in elephant

dung-piles on the shore; wincing,

whimpering,  “Look!” he said

– the scar of a severed limb.

“Look!”— the trickle dammed

with cinder blocks and broken tile.

Sniveling old noddy,

bundled in his heavy coat, crying

over broken trees and a dribble!

I withheld contempt till at the line

he turned, shrunken, vulnerable,

and, ready then, but then

a glimmer in the angle of his eye.

“You get attached to things,”

he said, cheeks quivering.

Lovesick old fool!  There

was nothing of any use to say.