I’m on the kitchen floor
playing Rudy Vallee’s
“Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries”
on mother’s wind-up Victrola.
Grandma huddles over
Mother’s anguished howls.
Father runs back and forth
to the window, searching for
the Doctor’s Roadmaster
in the densely drifting snow.
The doctor’s wife said he left
Ridge Road an hour ago.
Despite skid chains, the Doctor
careens over a white fire of foam
on our un-plowed roads.
I hear them cheering mother on
like racing fans desperate
for a winner at the finishing line.
Drenched with sweat,
her face flushed as red
as the reddest red rose,
she pushes and pushes,
and finally bears down,
but the Doctor’s not yet here
as the baby’s head begins to appear.
The baby slips though her legs,
as the Doctor comes charging through
the front door.
They’re an elderly couple
in their Sunday best,
side by side on a bench
in front of the Summerside Laundromat.
Not even the air moves.
Absorbed in reading,
they listen for the rumble
in the dryer to stop spinning.
They feed each other
peanuts and marzipan.
Few words exchanged.
They sense if each other
has to pee or poop,
is too hot or cold,
hungry or tired,
worried, or in pain,
or quietly at ease.
A silent dialogue
between souls.
Intimate moments,
are well practiced.
Nary a word is said
when a body
needs to be touched.
With effortless effort,
a life force flows
from one to the other,
as it should
Milton P. Ehrlich has published poems in the "Wisconsin Review,"Antigonish Review," "Toronto Quarterly Review," "Seventh Quarry: The Swansea Quarterly Review," "Shofar Literary Journal," "Slipstream Magazine," "Huffington Post," and the "New York Times."