When fourteen years ago I hurt my back,
the doctor thought I’d sprained my spine at first.
An MRI revealed the sorry fact:
a disk with damage that can’t be reversed.
He taught me to avoid a rupture then.
He wrote prescriptions for the lovely pills
that took the pain of pain away again,
and didn’t get me hooked or lead to ills.

For two times seven years the pain’s been gone,
prevented by my daily stretch and luck.
But lately I awake atwinge. At dawn
I feel that disk complain, and think “Oh fuck.”
A passing hundred minutes then assuage
the pain, and so I think the cause is age.