Some Fool
 
You run down the stairs, then slip, breaking your knee
on the cold sidewalk.
Several people stop to help, but you wave them away.
You don’t know them, don’t like how they smell
or the strange sounds emanating from their lips.
It’s ok you tell them, thank you very much but let me go.
And you limp, somehow, stumbling, half crawling,
to your little car and drive yourself to the only hospital
you trust, the white building in the gray city.
There, they remove your leg, replace it with a new one,
a wonder really, though it takes the rest of the day.
You don’t blame yourself.
Someone must have waxed the landing, some fool
trying for a promotion and look what happened.
Now it’s past eight and you haven’t eaten a thing since lunch.
The new leg’s a little stiff, but it looks good, shapely and slim.
At home you don’t feel like cooking, so you order out,
then get so hungry you eat two bowls of raisin bran.
When the food comes you tip the kid, put the cartons in the fridge.
The full-length mirror leers at you, but the TV whispers softly.
You curl up on the sofa, sleep like the dead until the middle of next week.


Steve Klepetar


If you have any thoughts on this poem,  Steve Klepetar would be pleased to hear them.