I know a man who, birth,
was broken by a doctor whose hands
faltered in the too long and too hard delivery.
           He grew up broken, his eyes crossed,
his legs withered, his head too large in circumference,
and his whole back scarred from neck to hip.
            He was given one year, two, ten, and now he’s thirty,
cousin Dink, with a grade school education,
without bitterness, with scars on his too often burned legs
that have no feeling, and
            would I send him a drinking glass,
the kind you buy at tourist spots, or if not that,
perhaps a road map of California?