COLONOSCOPY

This poem is irrelevant for young people
until the doctor says:
“At your age you need one of these
for a lifetime regimen,
every few years until…”

Snow White’s Step-Mother
must have invented
that first evil prep potion
you had to drink for hours,
which almost killed me
and made me swear off
lemonade for six months.

I was so sick I told the doctor
I would gamble against colon cancer
rather than drink that stuff again.

But they changed it to something
drinkable only by comparison,
the rest of the process not the stuff of poems.

I went in for mine this morning,
greeted by the same smiling face of the man
I see once every five years
as we go through this together,
he for the thousandth time,
me, starting at fifty, only for the sixth,
hoping for only polyps,
which are benign–hooray–once again.

When he pulls me out of sleep
to share the good news,
I mumble how many years until the next;
he smiles: Five.

But that will make me 82!
Is there a statute of limitations,
an age where old age and death
wait grinning heartily: “Why bother?”

And each time I say:
”I’m sure glad this is over.
Don’t ever want to do it again!”

But at 77, 82 in five years, I do.
I really do.

A retired special education teacher, Vern Fein has published over one hundred fifty poems on over eighty sites, a few being: *82 Review, Oddball Magazine, Bindweed Magazine, Gyroscope Review, Courtship of Winds, Young Raven’s Review, The Daily Drunk, and The Monterey Poetry Review.