It hurt my hands to color today.  

My guitar slips from my lap when I try to play.

My typing has become a joke compared to the impeccable glide

I used to use in all these things and now my memory cries

For the days when these much loved acts

Were taken so for granted as my own due facts.

My mind is adjusting still to the loss of just assuming

That I could be great at anything since my beginning is ungluing.

I think I’ll make some lemonade.

My mind is saying it is normal and okay

My heart is saying how can I consider I may

Find it alright to give up those things that made me me?

The things that gave me pleasure in time and company?

Someday perhaps I will find the strength

Or medicine will overcome the sorry, sorry length

Of time it is taking to whip rheumatoid and osteoarthritis

In the meantime I will hope and pray today and tomorrow for this.

I think I’ll make some lemonade.

I do not consider that I am ill in any sense.

In fact I think not ill at all but inconvenienced

But I remember Ma and her rheumatoid sickness and pain and I can’t

Be too resentful of my problems and I resolve to try not to rant.

It hurt my hands to color today. 

My guitar slips from my lap when I try to play.

My typing has become a joke compared to the impeccable glide

I used to use so poetry has become my passion, my adjustable pride.

There, I made my lemonade, complete.

It is a refreshment,

Bittersweet.

Kathy Adams