monday poem #75: Jim Ferris, "Normal"
Some weeks I think I should switch this commitment over to "tuesday poems," but I have a feeling I'd just end up posting on wednesdays.
Jim Ferris is a self-proclaimed "poet of cripples." His Hospital Poems focus on his childhood years spent in and out of various medical institutions, notably the Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children in Chicago. Some of the poems document the painful details of diagnoses, surgeries ("fragmentation and rodding of the left femur"), recoveries, fears, humiliations, casts, braces - and anger. Others, like this one, are more oblique and therefore - for me at least - more heartbreaking.
Normal
Across Oak Park Avenue
is a city park, lush
and busy, where men play softball all
evening, too far away
to watch, their dim voices
drifting across the green. Their cars line
the streets as far
as I can see. Sammy and I,
Robert and I, Hoffmann and I call out
the makes and models
as the cars pass. Dodge Dart.
Chevy Nova. We are seldom wrong-Corvair,
Pontiac GTO-we who drive
wheelchairs and banana carts-
Mustang, VW, Rambler American-who have not yet
rounded second-
'57 Chevy! My dad had one of those-
who watch out windows a world so soft-T-bird-
so fair-Corvette-
so normal-Ford Fairlane-
a world going on, going by, going home.
- Jim Ferris
from The Hospital Poems
Jim Ferris is a self-proclaimed "poet of cripples." His Hospital Poems focus on his childhood years spent in and out of various medical institutions, notably the Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children in Chicago. Some of the poems document the painful details of diagnoses, surgeries ("fragmentation and rodding of the left femur"), recoveries, fears, humiliations, casts, braces - and anger. Others, like this one, are more oblique and therefore - for me at least - more heartbreaking.
Normal
Across Oak Park Avenue
is a city park, lush
and busy, where men play softball all
evening, too far away
to watch, their dim voices
drifting across the green. Their cars line
the streets as far
as I can see. Sammy and I,
Robert and I, Hoffmann and I call out
the makes and models
as the cars pass. Dodge Dart.
Chevy Nova. We are seldom wrong-Corvair,
Pontiac GTO-we who drive
wheelchairs and banana carts-
Mustang, VW, Rambler American-who have not yet
rounded second-
'57 Chevy! My dad had one of those-
who watch out windows a world so soft-T-bird-
so fair-Corvette-
so normal-Ford Fairlane-
a world going on, going by, going home.
- Jim Ferris
from The Hospital Poems