Juggling as Medicine
They don’t ask if you are a juggler,
when you inquire about laser vision correction,
or whether you think you will someday
want to learn how to juggle balls or clubs.
self-self-pass-pop-flip-carry-intercept
the juggling sequence
in ‘catch the carrot’ club passing
When you reach life’s glorious ‘second spring’,
you might decide you must learn to juggle.
But it will make a difference, you see, if you’ve had
one eye corrected for close-up, the other for distance.
white and blue clubs – ‘self’ and ‘pass’ –
fly through the air
orange clubs, the carrots – ‘pop’
My juggling coach says he didn’t have laser eye surgery
when he found out he might lose depth perception,
have trouble judging distance and movement,
and now he knows why my progress is so slow.
always ‘carry’ and catch the ‘pop’
with inside hand to maintain colour coding
‘carry’ goes to the hand with the carrot
Carrots are good for your eyes and were first
grown as medicine. Learning to juggle
is frustrating but makes you laugh.
Laughter keeps you healthy.
(Note: With thanks to Greg Phillips for the juggling terms. Credit goes to Andreas, Jenny, and Ronja for inventing the ‘catch the carrot’ pattern.)
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