Tonight's Poet Corner: Sore Lot

Sore Lot
by Belinda Roddie

There's much to be learned
from the sore lot. Those who
ache in the wrong places, and those
who can't walk without groans,
and no amount of pill popping
can pop a bone back into its
proper angle, or a heart snuggled
against the appropriate cushions
in the chest.

You think you're sympathetic toward
them. But it is only when your head
pounds and your back swells
that you share in the dilation of their
desperate pupils, the urge to see
a cure for their maladies, the pavement
rising to meet their arthritic knees -
old before they are even considered
young, dying when they still
have enough breath to fuel fifty
more years. In pain when the
docs can find nothing. Say nothing.
Feel nothing.