Yard Sale of Thoughts

Fairmont Crossing Nursing Home

let us bring in a rocking chair,

old radio, pair of dungarees,

with back pocket comb.

Solid food stopped

shortly after, as

Grandpa was aspirating.

Radio seemed a rudder

to his mind, long ago

lost down river.

In the unsettling evening

during visiting time,

old recording of Hee Haw:

Roy Clark, Buck Owen,

corny cornfield jokes

strum of banjo and guitar,

donkey braying.

Hee Haw,

paper on comb,

I played along.

Grandpa’s smile,

ear-to-ear,

last I ever saw.

© 2023 | K. Hartless

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GloPoWRiMo #5 Begin by reading Charles Simic’s poem “The Melon.” It would be easy to call the poem dark, but as they say, if you didn’t have darkness, you wouldn’t know what light is. Or vice versa. The poem illuminates the juxtaposition between grief and joy, sorrow and reprieve. For today’s challenge, write a poem in which laughter comes at what might otherwise seem an inappropriate moment – or one that the poem invites the reader to think of as inappropriate.