A Broken Ankle (and Oliver Cromwell)
by Steven McCabe
At the nine and one-half week mark
Your foot is still swollen
Your ankle looks like a loaf of rye bread baked
On a winter night and placed inside a blanket
As winds howl through cracks in the walls.
Or something meaty and coarse
Illiterate peasants tear between their teeth
Marching beneath a mercenary banner
Fighting a war for glory and power
Though not their own.
The instructions are:
Elevate, ice, and exercise,
Form the alphabet three times a day with your foot.
Do not dangle your foot for hours above any battle scenes
Celebrated in embroidered tapestries
Warming cold castle walls.
For the last month you have worn an air cast
Made of plastic and plastic fabric
Following six weeks of plaster and then fibreglass
Monstrosities.
You march beneath the banner of a cane. This is next.
The electricity goes out. You push past a blond woman on a horse
Climbing the stairs. She’s dressed like a fish.
Or so it seems with glimmers of moonlight passing through cracks
In the roof.
You rescue two children.
This is not possible you are on crutches.
Oliver Cromwell’s army is marauding through the streets
Looking for Irish to enslave or decapitate.
You tear down a tapestry showing Puritans Arriving in America
And roll up the children.
You put a loaf of fresh bread between them
Dragging the tapestry to the corner of the Great Hall
Behind a counter with pastries, a cash register, and postcards.
You find your crutches.
Your air cast is light and removable
For a month and a half you wore what felt like anvils
And told yourself you weren’t going crazy.
This doesn’t really bother me you said.
You tell yourself you won’t be captured.
At the fracture clinic they said you would walk in
On September 8th with a cane and a limp.
Your foot fits in your unlaced walking shoe.
Oliver Cromwell is trying on wooden shoes.
Where did he get those?
He laughs a high-pitched laugh.
His Puritan followers board a ship for the Caribbean
Leading captives bound neck to neck.
You walk right through them and shudder with cold.
You limp into the sunshine
Stopping at your neighbourhood cafe.
poemimage 
I have a cane. It was made from a piece of curved ironwood and my Father carved a crows head for it. Nothing graceful…just a crow’s head fit to the arc of the handle with a little knob to help the grip. It’s come in handy a few times. It is immensely stabilizing and adds just the needed dimension to the impact of incapacity. Like an extra appendage…not foreign at all. Every part of my body likes this cane. Your foot needs a good ‘buddy’ like this, Steven.
Jana your cane sounds inspiring. Connected to your father and the tree and the forest. Balancing you on the earth. Yes this sounds like a true friend. And the crow! Even if I use something basic and utilitarian I will think of your cane. Thank you!
Your poor ankle! You’ve given it a fine tribute, though.
Thank you Richard, Yes, I guess that’s true! A tribute (to the source of my tribulation) with a bit of a historical jaunt!
Ouch! A whole new appreciation of ankles!
Onward we balance! Thank you Nel.
Your words and pictorial fantasies (humour also and appreciated) dance on crutches above the everyday pain and frustrations of your healing (heeling?) process. I admire and celebrate your creative courage and your surreal historical knitting juxtapositions with Mr. Cromwell as your bones etc knit together again…brilliant meditation with / without footnotes Steven…
Thank you John. I enjoyed reading your encapsulation and went back to reread the poem and imagined you seeing and interpreting. You make very good points about the ‘healing/heeling/ process and the ‘knitting.’ Nice use of double meanings! I appreciate your generosity in dwelling with these ‘markings’ and sharing your impressions.