Like this, Max, the black Gladstone bearing, gruff-tender town doctor,
whose very presence started the healing process. A couple of suggestions:
in stanza 2, his wife would pick ? child a mere overhearer sounds a little
odd, when you move to third person in stanza 4. Are you sure Jaguars
purred? I would have though they burbled more. I suppose it fits with your
calmly assured upper class man. Not sure of your Daimler point.
Bill
On Wednesday, October 14, 2015, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> The Doctor’s Car
>
> In a time long-gone
> when fever set in,
> spots or swelling,
> a call to the doctor
> brought him round
> in his Jaguar, our
> suburb’s only one.
>
> His wife had picked
> up the phone in
> their kitchen, saying:
> I’ll let him know -
> he won’t be long.
> When it was fevers,
> he never was.
>
> Part of the cure
> was seeing him
> through front curtains
> slow up at the kerb
> near our front hedge,
> park, step from the Jag,
> lift after him his
> potent black bag,
> a Gladstone no less,
> ring our doorbell,
> doff his dark hat;
>
> check your pulse,
> big dark hand on
> your tiny wrist,
> with a fob watch
> slid from the vest
> of his dark suit;
> voice gruff-tender
> directed at Mother,
> child a mere
> overhearer.
> He’d shake his
> thermometer,
> stow it, saying:
> He’ll soon be better.
>
> You did get better,
> these things passed,
> flu, measles, mumps.
> The wallpaper stopped
> swirling with snakes,
> ears that had popped
> rested; the shakes,
> delirium, faded.
>
> What had he prescribed?
> Rest, lemon drinks,
> something pink
> in a square bottle
> from the chemist,
> maybe a promise
> of a second visit
> with the rare purr
> of his Jaguar.
>
> Glimpsed thereafter
> on the streets we shared,
> the doctor’s dark Jaguar
> ferried him quietly to
> families in need,
> even to Grandma’s
> the day she died.
> Her undertaker's
> fleet were Daimlers.
|