My Hearing Aid Chronicle

My father-in-law hated his hearing aids

Once a week the batteries went dead 

They made screechy sounds at the opera

Which filled his poor wife with such dread 

I myself never thought about hearing aids

Because I never planned to grow old

But at fifty my ears became dodgy

An unpleasant truth, when all’s told 

I noticed this first as a teacher

Mishearing what students would say

This mean girl spoke softer and softer

A fiendish prank some students play 

I checked with my chums about hearing aids

Morris leaves his at home in the box

Catherine still doesn’t hear her hubby

Though she rarely seems to listen when he talks 

My spouse had a more upbeat vision

Her friend Martha’s hearing aids changed her life 

Martha said she became more outgoing 

A prospect that appealed to my wife 

She sent me to the audiologist and I got a test 

He said he could definitely help

But he charged twice as much as the Big Box

And the Big Box got smiles on Yelp 

 

So I shelled out a fortune for hearing aids

Then I only had worn them one week

When I lost one while camping in Michigan 

All the squirrels were distressed by my shriek

I still don’t hear well at the movies

I struggle to follow the story 

Monsters and car bombs are what I like best

Less talk and more images gory 

In the past my hearing was terrible

But now I would say it’s just bad 

“Just bad’s” an improvement after all

For small things one ought to be glad 

Lizard Observations

About eighty million lizards

live in California's Mojave Desert

I know this to be true 

because I found it on Google

although they failed to report   

the total lizard population of North America

My final guess, 1.2 billion

which would mean more lizards 

than human beings and dogs combined

One of these colonies

is located outside our house

on our steps

the sidewalk 

the patio deck

in the driveway

next to the garage 

under the recycling bin 

here and there in the flower beds 

Our little guests love to relax in the sunshine

where they slumber with their eyes shut tight

then retreat to their lizard dens at sunset 

Cincinnati lizards are neither angry nor obstreperous

They never bare their tiny sharp teeth

or make unpleasant growling noises 

Quite the reverse, they are exceedingly shy

and flee at the first sign of human intruders

You would not believe how speedy these lizards can be

though they are only four or five inches long

The dog has never been able to catch one 

despite trying so many times 

They zoom straight up walls

scurry into minuscule holes

vanish in the tall grass or the rock pile  

Five years ago not a single lizard lived on our block 

but now dozens of them 

maybe hundreds 

share our space 

I am pleased they have joined our family 

We are lonely and bored during the pandemic 

and, thanks to our lizard friends 

we live in a more lively and exotic place

This Is A Poem I Wrote In My Sleep Last Night

  

D e t e r m i n e D    D e l i g h t e D    D e m e n t e D    D e c e a s e D

e                 e    e               e    e             e    e             e

t                 t    l               l    m             m    c             c

e                 e    i               i    e             e    e             e

r                 r    g               g    n             n    a             a

m                 m    h               h    t             t    s             s

i                 i    t               t    e             e    e             e

n                 n    e               e    D e m e n t e D    D e c e a s e D

e                 e    D e l i g h t e D

D e t e r m i n e D

The Best of Times

When I was just a kid in forty-nine

The world was a much more hopeful place 

The automat — the finest place to dine

Bob Hope and Jane starred in “The Paleface”

Our town had yet to see a TV set

Our telephone was on a party line

One penny, you could buy a cigarette

We viewed the House and Senate as benign

We rode our bikes to school every day

And milk arrived in bottles made of glass

We whiled away the hours at croquet

Latin was the language used for mass

Those times now seem the best of all and yet

How did we live without the Internet?

Twelve Years Ago This Autumn (An Ode to Retirement)

Half past six, our alarm screams out 

My spouse lays out my jacket and tie

Rush hour, gridlock, stops and starts  

My daily commute, a chance to die 

Who needs this? 

I scan yellowed notes, get primed for class 

One hundred deadpan undergrad faces  

My deepest fear, they’ll find me boring

No way I can gain the crowd’s good graces   

I feel a migraine coming on 

Tuna salad, I lunch at my desk  

Then off to the weekly faculty meeting

We pick at the rules for the umpteenth time 

Searching for an answer to stop student cheating  

Beating a dead horse

I meet with a grad student about her thesis

No way I can think of a workable topic 

Failing to give even subpar advice

I fear that my brain is becoming myopic

Anxiety and shame, doldrums

Back to my office, an hour of my own

I work on an obtuse research paper 

The findings are bland, the conclusions obscure 

Time ill-spent on a dead-end caper 

What is the point exactly? 

Postscript (Twelve years later, here and now) 

My biggest worry when I retired 

How will I ever survive without work?  

It took two days to make my transition  

Surprise, surprise, I’m no longer berserk  

Life is gentle, life is kind   

Old Dog, New Tricks

A new world, truly.

Because I have fewer underlying conditions 

I volunteered to be  

head grocery shopper for our household. 

An honor though not without its own perils.  

I like to think of myself as a type of domestic first responder. 

This morning Katja gave me the weekly list

and I set out for Clifton Market.

Most items were a snap:

Peanut butter, black olives, greenish bananas, 

dog food, unsalted butter, Bounty paper towels. 

More challenging, the unsweetened cocoanut, 

but I enlisted a shelf-stocking lad 

who guided me straight to my item.  

I eventually found the vinegar department myself

but had to call home on to see 

if “apple cider vinegar”

were the same as the

“cider vinegar” on my list. 

(It was.) 

Two avocados made up the final items

on my scavenger hunt 

and I asked a masked pale-skinned clerk 

where the avocados were.

She pointed to the end of the produce aisle

where I found a variety of exotic fruits

organized symmetrically in cardboard boxes.

Unfortunately only the mangoes and the kiwis were labelled.  

Not entirely confident in my judgment

I picked out two dark green, lumpy, ovular fruits

and carried these back to the masked clerk.

“Would these be the avocados?” I asked hesitantly. 

She looked at me strangely

and nodded affirmatively.

“Would you like my help in choosing some?” she volunteered.

Though appreciative, I graciously declined.

Walking home I reflected

how much I’ve grown 

in my new responsibilities 

as head grocery shopper.  

My Pugilistic Career

All the Antioch freshmen had to take Phys Ed 

Maybe golf or horseshoes or squash  

I picked badminton,which sounded most gentle

But my roommate picked boxing, omigosh

Al was a chemist, a nerdy guy

Short, uncoordinated, even flabby

But each time he came back from his boxing class

He raved about his fights, oh so gabby 

Winter quarter arrived and I’d had enough

I was sure I was more manly than Al

I signed up for boxing, the first class I picked

I just knew it would boost my morale 

The first class meeting came as a shock

From the whole campus, all the biggest guys 

At least six foot two, two hundred pounds

I knew I’d never win a prize 

Class sessions were brutal sparring bouts

Monstrous brutes were on the attack 

A punch to the cheek, a blow to the gut

Thud, Crash, Whomp a Domp, Nasty Smash 

There was only one guy the same size as me 

When paired up we’d both go insane 

You’d never know we were mild-mannered 

We went all out, heck with the pain

I told Al my class was a nightmare 

The weekly pummeling left me sad 

Yes, Al said, it was the same for him 

“What?” I yelled, “that is so bad.”

Months later I got drunk at a party

I told Al, “Let’s go out and fight” 

He laughed and thought I was kidding

But I meant to show him my might 

Nowadays my gym has a punching bag

My left jab is still pretty quick 

But I’ve never once used my boxing skills 

Badminton, a more practical pick