Saturday, February 20, 2010

Ode to my Knees

Thank you, knees
for elasticity that bounced me up
a thousand times while learning to walk,
for healing a hundred times from gravel
and skateboards and bikes,
for looking, well, not too bad
in shorts and bathing suits
in front of girls in high school.

I'm grateful, knees, for your heroic --
if not always sucessful -- efforts
to keep me erect after climbing down'
from barstools.  And then when I finally changed
to healthier addictions
for taking the pounding of marathon miles.

I appreciate you, knees, for not shaking too much
when standing in front of crowds to speak,
for supporting my weight when kneeling to pray,
and, twice, to propose.

And now, I beg your fogiveness, knees
for totally ignoring you and making you sit
bent and immobile under desks,
for letting you grow still on the couch too much.

So now you ache incessently and stab me
should I dare to stoop, to wear my trousers rolled.
But I will not complain, dear knees,
for you have served me well, so I will just say,
"Thanks."    And take another aspirin. 

9 comments:

  1. Knees are cool, and should be honored. With odes.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wonderful! ... as usual! Your knees must be happy to have received such an homage!:-)

    With the age, yes, you are bound to have some problems. I take some injections in my knees each year to help them to continue working as long as possible (without pain-killing pills). So far it works! For how long?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I started to hear "Please help us. Please don't punish us through another year of such excruciating pain. If you don't help us we are going to sideline you forever." So I listened and had the poor knee joints replaced with brand new titanium ones and now my knees say,"Oh thank you, thank you." Now I am thankful for my artificial knees.
    QMM

    ReplyDelete
  4. So many of our body parts never receive a simple `thank you` for all that they do.

    Do you know of the John Sarno, M.D. technique to deal with chronic pain? It costs nothing to try and might produce good results ...

    ReplyDelete
  5. very cute! knee do take quite the beating for us. our bodies are magnificent and mysterious.

    ReplyDelete
  6. "Amen..!" says she ... popping another Tylenol.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Mine carry on a constant conversation with me as I walk -- a kind of angry natter that sounds like the grinding of teeth.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I now feel ashamed of how I've let me knees down.

    Thank you for the realization that I have some work to do on these old knees of mine.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Love this...,and yes we all should be thankful for our knees and all how they make certain things much easier for us

    ReplyDelete