Featured Poem: Speech Pathologist Exegesis in Four Movements

By Nancy Keats Benson
Central New York Branch

 

delving into memory boxes

all those years floating by so silently

as years of work, houses visited,

all sorts, the criminal just let out,

with help after drugs had ravaged his brain,

trying to work with words and sounds,

while always on alert for nefarious goings-on.

 

the house with the two mastiffs,

“Don’t worry,” she says, “They’re locked

in the garage.”

Gathering my speech paraphernalia

vocabulary cards, pictures, language

ideas for the lovely lady who recently had a stroke

and then…

running after me, I crouched, placed

my head in my arms and curled up

on the couch.

“oh, no…”

I heard her voice, soft and weak,

feebly saying, “No.”

She got them into the dining room,

and said, “go”.

I took off for the front door,

heart in my chest

pounding,

went out and felt safe,

without keys to my car,

without speech bag.

sneaked back,

peaked in,

rushed inside,

got the purse and bag

and drove away.

 

the 5th grader in my speech room,

he came with a severe stutter,

working so hard on

relaxation,

visualization,

and gently

falling into sentences

with little repetitions, blocks,

until the day

when his personality

rebelled and he

said,

as I played a record,

with his hand on the arm of the

record player,

about to scratch the record,

and I said, “Please do not touch that.”

He said so forcefully, without a stuttered moment,

“Make my day!”

Call the buzzer to the principal.

He put the arm down.

 

So many memories

filtered and drifting through

my mind as I enter each day.