Rondeau: Old Woman With Cat Poem by Marilyn L. Taylor

Osteoporosis (one of life's indignities)
is such a splendid name for the disease—
all those little o's, holes in the bone
where the rain gets in, rendering a crone
like me defective, porous as swiss cheese.

I'm riddled at the hips and knees,
roundsided as parentheses
since my shrunken spine has known
osteoporosis—

and my extremities
have shriveled into lacy filagrees,
breakable as glass on stone.
Naked at the window ledge I drone
to my sleek, supple Siamese:
osteoporosis.