:: white stick ::

(Note: This was the first poem I wrote after my father died. It took me fourteen years to realise that! Amazing what context does. This is one of my favourite poems. It was supposed to be all in lower case, but I made a mistake in the last stanza, which I left in, because I think it's more effective. -- 2008/03/31)

white stick tapping on the pavement;
dark glasses covering disoriented eyeballs;
the young man sways amongst the pedestrians.
he is ignored for his disability,
he is shoved like a ping-pong ball,
thrown from one side of the court
to the other, smacked by hard
wooden paddles.

i'm blind, he wants to shout
help me please! But then it
dawns on him that he is
being shoved and pushed
because everyone else on the
pavement also wears dark glasses
and holds a long thin stick.
they are all blind.

Copyright © 7/1994 Randolph Potter

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