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# A Humbling
- URL: https://www.andyposner.org/life-humbles-you/
- Published: 2023-11-08T06:41:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-14T14:06:51.000Z
- Author: Andy Posner
- Tags: poetry

Even then Dad’s knees were bad,  
wincing as he crouched behind  
the makeshift home plate  
in our suburban cul-de-sac  
which to me was as grand  
as Yankee stadium, the neighbors,  
I swear, crowding on balconies  
to watch greatness unfold.

I did not notice how hard it was  
for him to chase wild pitches  
as they bounced, time and again,  
into the hedges, nor the look  
that would pass over his face  
as he recalled the responsibilities  
lying in wait for him at home.

By the time of his double knee  
replacement I had gone from  
baseball to tennis to poetry to  
running a nonprofit that would,  
if not save the world, at least heal  
the damage I’d done it…

I realized I was not great  
slowly, the way knees go bad.  
First there’s the ache a pill  
can hold at bay. Then two.  
Then pain leaks through  
the patched seams of your life  
and you know there is only  
relief in last resorts

but you are afraid,  
you shiver until the muscles  
that shiver cramp and go quiet  
and you are alive the way one  
who wakes from major surgery  
is alive, asking the kind nurse  
who is overworked and underpaid  
*What is left for me now*  
and she hands you a mirror  
because you are desperate for a mirror,  
and there you see the face  
that was his face when,  
done with practice,  
having massaged his knees  
and put away our gear,  
he would trudge back  
to his banal labors.