Doctor's Office - June 5, 2025

in the waiting room, you imagine the

slow-to-handle patients already inside

complaining in a hundred different ways

or telling their life story in travel banter,

or the origin speech about growing up -

marriage, kids and adorable grandkids

so by the time lunch rolls around

the doc is an hour behind schedule

and eats while the afternoon’s first

patient sighs, fumes under their breath

and stares daggers at the office clock

so, yeah, set the alarm and take

the earliest appointment you can

unless

you’re a poet, like me, cruising the

middle roads of a poem your writing,

a kind of entrenched focus I’d

rather not be pulled from

quite upset when the receptionist

calls my name at 4:30 for the

3 o’clock appointment they said

was all they had