HAPPY B'DAY TO ME

VIII.
Like a dull scholar, I behold, in love,
An ancient aspect touching a new mind.
It comes, it blooms, it bears its fruit and dies.
This trivial trope reveals a way of truth.
Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof.
Two golden gourds distended on our vines,
Into the autumn weather, splashed with frost,
Distorted by hale fatness, turned grotesque.
We hang like warty squashes, streaked and rayed,
The laughing sky will see the two of us
Washed into rinds by rotting winter winds.

FROM "LE MONOCLE DE MON ONCLE" BY WALLACE STEVENS
that's a pic of my swollen hand that resulted from a vicious gout attack in my wrist last week. i spent 14 harrowing hours in the e.r. but they did load me up on morphine. i was told that an initial gout attack hitting the wrist is rare. the doctor seemed impressed. it usually manifests in the big toe.
as bobo told my mother when he called her to tell about a friend's death: "it's all hospitals & funerals from here on out." stevens says the same thing but w/an eloquence that usually escaped bobo, which is not to say that bobo wasn't succinct.