Now, who doesn't need a hug every now and then?
This wonderful poem from Peter Meinke sums up the status quo.
I'm cuttin' out for a drink with Uncle Jim.
by Peter Meinke
What the children remember about Uncle Jim
is that on the train to Reno to get divorced
so he could marry again
he met another woman and woke up in California.
It took him seven years to untangle that dream
but a man who could sing like Uncle Jim
was bound to get in scrapes now and then:
he expected it and we expected it.
Mother said,
It's because he was the middle child,
and Father said, Yeah, where there's trouble
Jim's in the middle.
When he lost his voice he lost all of it
to the surgeon's knife and refused the voice box
they wanted to insert. In fact he refused
almost everything. Look, they said,
it's up to you. How many years do you want to live?
and Uncle Jim held up one finger.
The middle one.
"Uncle Jim" by Peter Meinke, from Liquid Paper: New and Selected Poems. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)
Writer's Almanac
puppy & vm ~ hug therapy
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