Felicity the healer isn’t young <br />And you don’t look him up unless you need him. <br />Clown’s eyes, Pope’s nose, a mouth for dirty stories, <br />He made his bundle in the Great Depression <br /> <br />And now, a jovial immigrant success <br />In baggy pinstripes, he winks and wheezes gossip, <br />Village stories that could lift your hair <br />Or lance a boil; the small town dirt, the dope, <br /> <br />The fishy deals and incestuous combinations, <br />The husband and the wife of his wife’s brother, <br />The hospital contract, the certificate ... <br />A realist and hardy omnivore, <br /> <br />He strolls the jetties when the month is right <br />With a knife and lemons in his pocket, after <br />Live mussels from among the smelly rocks, <br />Preventative of impotence and goitre. <br /> <br />And as though the sight of tissue healing crooked <br />Pleased him, like the ocean’s vaginal taste, <br />He’ll stitch your thumb up so it shows for life. <br />And where he once was the only quack in town <br /> <br />We all have heard his half-lame joke, the one <br />About the operation that succeeded, <br />The tangy line that keeps that clever eye <br />So merry in the punchinello face.<br /><br />Robert Pinsky<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/doctor-frolic/
