A Tentative Entry

It didn’t take his
finger up my bum
to tell me I had
benign prostatic hyperplasia.
I’d been reading
about it for years –
and it felt good.

A finger up my bum
told me more than
I needed to know
or feel. A tentative
entry, first night trembles
on a stuttering stage.

It told me more than
a dark shaking whisper
in a light-glanced
world of dazzling marigolds
could hold in one open
hand. Or in a stretched
maw gaping with memories.

A dark shaking whisper
pre ambled into a vale of fears,
moistened, glistening, a zephyr of anticipation
and digit. The penetration had begun.


Allan Padgett (Western Australia)