To Anyone Who Has Ever Said That a Poem Cannot Teach Us Anything Practical
By M F Drummy
July 15, 2024
July 15, 2024
you have not read
Donald Platt’s “Boundary Waters” because,
if you had,
you would have discovered,
as I did,
that a rollator is not the same as a walker.
A walker
typically has hard rubber feet on the bottom of
each of its four
hollow aluminum legs for exceptional stability and which,
with every step taken,
needs to be lifted forward by the gait-impaired individual
who then steps into the area
where the walker was just a moment before.
It can be slow going.
By comparison, the sporty rollator, as
the name implies,
is an assistive mobility device that rolls along the floor,
gliding effortlessly
in synch with the person’s every movement.
Brakes are used
to stop the thing and it often includes
a convenient seat
on which the person can rest.
Many rollators
have a small storage basket or case
for the individual to
carry essential personal items, such as books,
or perhaps an
electronic tablet. Walkers rarely include
any of
these features, but both devices allow for ample
height adjustment.
Having recently been diagnosed with
idiopathic peripheral
neuropathy myself, and making a fruitless trip
right before Christmas to
the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota,
where the dozens
of tests I underwent all proved inconclusive,
I found Donald’s
mention in passing in his poem of his
body with its nerve
pain, unable to walk anymore without its rollator,
somehow oddly comforting.
I can see my future now: Rollator, walker, wheelchair,
bed.
And that is if I’m lucky.
The boundary waters
in northern Minnesota that Donald dreams of navigating in a canoe
with his wife
are off limits to both of us now.
My whole life
I have pushed up against, and sometimes through, boundaries,
of my own creation
or those that, for whatever reason, appeared before me
seemingly out of
nowhere, circumscribing my life in
a dizzying array of
situations and beliefs and decisions that,
today,
seem peculiar, petty, and simply irrelevant.
Already unsteady
on my feet for one who, until just a few years ago,
ran half marathons
every other weekend, I know that I will find it
increasingly difficult
to walk, and then to walk at all, and then to be able
to sit up,
then to feed, dress, bathe, and toilet myself. I will decline.
I will require care
from nurses or, perhaps, my partner in life if she is still here with me
and able to do so.
Friends and family will visit me, if I am so fortunate.
And then I, too,
will begin to dream of crystal-clear boundaryless waters that straddle
the border between
the United States and Canada, where the rocks on the bottom can
be seen from a canoe
as through glass, and of beginnings I will make again
with everyone
I have ever loved, and I will whisper at the end
to anyone
who has ever said that a poem cannot teach
us anything practical,
to listen closely to the water lapping on the shore
of the melting lake
that forms the edge of everything we know,
and for
the solitary call of the loon as it dissolves in the vagrant wind.
Donald Platt’s “Boundary Waters” because,
if you had,
you would have discovered,
as I did,
that a rollator is not the same as a walker.
A walker
typically has hard rubber feet on the bottom of
each of its four
hollow aluminum legs for exceptional stability and which,
with every step taken,
needs to be lifted forward by the gait-impaired individual
who then steps into the area
where the walker was just a moment before.
It can be slow going.
By comparison, the sporty rollator, as
the name implies,
is an assistive mobility device that rolls along the floor,
gliding effortlessly
in synch with the person’s every movement.
Brakes are used
to stop the thing and it often includes
a convenient seat
on which the person can rest.
Many rollators
have a small storage basket or case
for the individual to
carry essential personal items, such as books,
or perhaps an
electronic tablet. Walkers rarely include
any of
these features, but both devices allow for ample
height adjustment.
Having recently been diagnosed with
idiopathic peripheral
neuropathy myself, and making a fruitless trip
right before Christmas to
the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota,
where the dozens
of tests I underwent all proved inconclusive,
I found Donald’s
mention in passing in his poem of his
body with its nerve
pain, unable to walk anymore without its rollator,
somehow oddly comforting.
I can see my future now: Rollator, walker, wheelchair,
bed.
And that is if I’m lucky.
The boundary waters
in northern Minnesota that Donald dreams of navigating in a canoe
with his wife
are off limits to both of us now.
My whole life
I have pushed up against, and sometimes through, boundaries,
of my own creation
or those that, for whatever reason, appeared before me
seemingly out of
nowhere, circumscribing my life in
a dizzying array of
situations and beliefs and decisions that,
today,
seem peculiar, petty, and simply irrelevant.
Already unsteady
on my feet for one who, until just a few years ago,
ran half marathons
every other weekend, I know that I will find it
increasingly difficult
to walk, and then to walk at all, and then to be able
to sit up,
then to feed, dress, bathe, and toilet myself. I will decline.
I will require care
from nurses or, perhaps, my partner in life if she is still here with me
and able to do so.
Friends and family will visit me, if I am so fortunate.
And then I, too,
will begin to dream of crystal-clear boundaryless waters that straddle
the border between
the United States and Canada, where the rocks on the bottom can
be seen from a canoe
as through glass, and of beginnings I will make again
with everyone
I have ever loved, and I will whisper at the end
to anyone
who has ever said that a poem cannot teach
us anything practical,
to listen closely to the water lapping on the shore
of the melting lake
that forms the edge of everything we know,
and for
the solitary call of the loon as it dissolves in the vagrant wind.
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M F Drummy holds a PhD in historical theology from Fordham University. The author of numerous articles, essays, poems, reviews, and a monograph on religion and ecology, his work has appeared, or will appear, in Allium, [Alternate Route], Anti-Heroin Chic, DarkWinter, Deal Jam, Emerge, FERAL, Heimat Review, Last Leaves, Main Street Rag, Marbled Sigh, Meetinghouse, Muleskinner, Poemeleon, The Word’s Faire, Winged Penny Review, and many others. He and his way cool life partner of over 20 years enjoy splitting their time between the Colorado Rockies and the rest of the planet.
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