Radical Therapy
for Tom
Last month my therapist retired.
I had visited him every two or three weeks
for eleven years. I counted on him
like gravity or eventual sleep.
Therapy can feel like bought friendship.
I mean where else can you get someone
to listen to all your crap, let you rattle on
about yourself. My therapist managed
to be both friend and guide.
He heard every secret, every slight,
every agony, nursed me through them,
invited me back. Towards the end, when
for the first time in thirty-five years
I started scribbling poems, he would read
my newest effort aloud and chat about it. I called it
radical therapy. He said he was just doing his job.
*
Long ago Kenny Likis wrote his master’s thesis on Robert Creeley. Early in the pandemic, he got the urge to write poems and has been hard at it since. His work has appeared in Caustic Frolic, Riddled with Arrows, Birmingham Poetry Review, and Paterson Literary Review. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
