I like the way the memory carries this, Max, & the car, oh very much the car. Its calm also the doc’s…
(I tried to post yesterday after downloading a new OS, but my Mail just kept disappearing on me; seems to be okay now but I’m going to have it looked at, so to speak).
I get Bill’s point about the wife, but in each case, as it happened, she had picked up that phone, so I’m okay with that… but you might keep the you throughout, rather than ‘the child’ there…?
Doug
> On Oct 13, 2015, at 4:19 PM, 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.
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