Tremor

    by Jan Duncan-O'Neal

You haven’t seen him in months —

the slender college man who could

slip between his sheets without leaving

a crease.  He wears the same size slacks.

Thoughts linear like the slide rule that

always hung from his belt.  Still the same

quiet person he was fifty years ago.  Lets

his chatty wife fill in conversation like

speech balloons in Sunday comics.

He could be depended upon to find

his way down unfamiliar highways.

He’d show up at work, the engineer

who glanced at you, smiled sparingly,

but not because he was cold.  Only shy.

One year ago, his head began to shake,

now the tremors come so frequently

he holds onto his chin with resolution,

smiles, keeps moving ahead.

© 2012  Jan Duncan-O'Neal

Jan Duncan-O'Neal, a Pushcart Nominee, has been a librarian, a professional storyteller, a teacher, and public speaker.  She grew up in Kansas City and now lives in Overland Park, Kansas with her husband Bill who is a devoted reader and editor of her work.  Her poems have been published in such journals as Kansas City Voices, Coal City Review, I-70 Review, and Touch: The Journal of Healing.  Her chapbook Voices: Lost and Found was published in 2011 by The Lives You Touch Publications.  She enjoys reading her poems to attentive audiences and was a featured reader recently for The Writers Place of Kansas City.  Jan is an editor for I-70 Review and a member of the Kansas City Writers Group.