Goines On: Word hurdling

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Goines was tired out yesterday, and he would have emphasized the word out if he had the strength. His left nostril bled several times and he grew tired of stuffing it with tissue and dabbing up the occasional blood splotch. He was too tired, too, to diagnose his condition. “I am SO TIRED today,” he’d emailed a friend simply.
    Mrs. Goines came to the rescue with some advice: Don’t blow your nose so hard, use the saline nasal mist, take Claritin.
    Yes, he acknowledged drowsily, the diagnosis implied by the advice: allergies. He hadn’t the strength to connect the dots himself.
    One Claritin down the hatch this morning, nostrils well-sprayed with saline mist, Goines seemed back on.
    And, instead of mindlessly spooning up random combinations of blueberries, blackberries, & raspberries and finely diced Bosc pear and Kiwi fruit with his yogurt and Cheerios and Udi’s au naturel, he slowly spooned little bites of yogurt & cereal with individual berries, or with individual, large pieces of pear or Kiwi fruit, loving each bite singly, enjoying its distinctive taste.

    Much pleased with himself, he did a word hurdle, and judged himself lucky for needing all six guesses, because he saw he could chain the words into a poem for a niece who needed a kick-start:

Keep your poise,
avoid those shady cribs.
Something this way stirs.
Stay near the rails,
be wary of raids –
here come the rains!

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