Big, Big Poosa-Face
 
So little, my long-lost friend.  So large,
the thunderheads  rushed in to send
melon hail flying at you.  No little
fight!  No little ability to sparkle!  No
little spunk; no little sense of timing.
Comic artiste, that was you!  Four foot
ten-and-a-half on tiptoe,  hundred-plus
of energy and drive.  Talk about a barrel
o' fun.  Your suit of armor, and you kept it
shining. . .so long, so long.  Helped you
bounce back when your father allowed
your mom to die of a burst appendix
out of religious fervor.  Bounce back
from rejection after rejection by creeps
did not deserve your time, let alone
your adoration.  Tallest and strongest
of us will succumb if frozen out long
enough.  Say, from birth.  Say, after
being bombarded with weapons near-
impossible to fight.  Say your face
is not pretty, your body less.   Say
you have parents who back away out
of disappointment feels like disgust.
Say you spend your adolescence in
a time when standards are high --
and insanely restricted -- for "beauty,"
and females have to qualify.  Say ugly
in your sex is seldom tolerated.   Add.
unknowable factors.  Almost inevitable
that you would end up as I found you
the summer I returned from college.
Shock shook when I saw the working
girl leaning outside our beloved Orpheum
was you.   Inches of black leather decades
before The Mini.  Grease troweled on
the face used to mime what you called
a "poosa-face" until everybody fell out.
Edging over, not knowing what I was
going to say, I saw you shut me out.  
Was it my expression?  Some other failure
of mine?  Could you not tell that I cared?
Or was caring the problem?  Only cared
about you.  We were friends!  Shared
our secrets, laughed, raved, ranted, cried.
Singed wires.  You and A. saved me, you
know.  So sorry I don't want to know what
hail has done to you since.   Feel you
would rather I make a poosa-face half
as funny as you.  If, like me, you are still
hanging in, you're in your seventies.
Be safe, be well, be laughing, be. . .you.

      (c) Phyllis Jean Green, 2008