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Sport 25: Spring 2000

Marg Ranger

Marg Ranger

page 44

Exact Words

Some time after the vasectomy
my friend mentioned
she might be pregnant.

Then her husband Dave
called to say
she was in bed with a tumour
the size of a baseball.
I could hear the World Series
playing in the background.
He passed the phone over
to her. It's true, she said
as big as a cantaloupe.
She certainly knew
her tropical fruits.

Dave phoned again
after the operation.
Benign, the surgeon reckons.
And the size and shape
of a baby's head.
Talk about a close shave.
Those were his exact words.

page 45

Insomnia is a window of opportunity

my father explained,
waking us at 4am
to view the craters of the moon
and Saturn's shifting rings
through his telescope.

Look, yawned my sister.
You can see into the future.

When my brother was a child
he could see right through things.
Once he saw the sun
lighting up the other side
of the world at sunset.

Years later
my sister in Beijing
took an earlier plane
and missed her flight
that crashed into the sea
at Kai Tak.

Listen, my father said.
It's the dawn chorus.