Read it in the paper
That husband-wife pharmacy column
Always fascinating stuff
Man had psoriasis, found cure
Went to Israel three years in a row
Dead Sea was the answer
Psoriasis free ever since
“Expensive, but it healed me” he wrote
Combining a lament and a victory
Daddy had it too
Got diagnosed by Dr. Will
Daddy came home and announced “sore-I-is”
Never mastered that final syllable
Didn’t matter too much
Didn’t make it any more comfortable
Sitting out in the back yard
Evening of a hot summer day
We would sit on the painted metal chairs
In the back yard
Under the water oak, the little slip he had pulled from Uncle Oscar’s bottom land
The one he said momma “and her second husband would sit under”
A prescient man he was
He would sit there, his wife and three kids gathered
No shirt, pants legs rolled up above his knees
The shins displayed with their thick yellow crust
He rubbed Vaseline all over them to soften it
In the summer when we would go to the beach for three days
His legs would almost totally clear up
Dead Sea man must have known his business
Too bad people can’t make their own decisions
About ailments
I mean how ‘bout a choice
Like maybe swap off psoriasis for an enlarged prostate
Probably would not have to go to Dead Sea for treatment
Or have a lottery
Oops, got pancreatic cancer
Damn the bad luck
At fifty bet his prostate hadn’t even had a chance to get big
He would sit there and talk
He had a saying
“If I live to be__________” and he would insert an age
At eleven it struck me strange
Then one time in high school
Runnin’ my mouth
I told some friends how he would say this
And how odd it was for him to say it
Then quickly realized how foolish I sounded
And shut up reeeeeaaaalllll fast
He lasted six months after the exploratory
Decades ago there was a product
Supposed to help “the heartbreak of psoriasis” “Heartbreak” maybe a little strong.
Touching.. but sad!
Touching but sad
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