By John RC Potter

Let me tell you a story of a gal
on a door
in the back of a station wagon
on her way
to the hospital,
and how she ended up there.

Becky had a freefall from grace,
barrelling out the kitchen door;
in a race to go nowhere fast,
embarrassed to the crimson core.

Her pride was injured and
the gal’s body was in pain.
Mother: “We must call an ambulance!”
Father: “No need to go to that bother.”
The gal lay prostrate and in pain,
thinking dear old dad had lost the plot.

The gal’s father hatched a plan,
the station wagon was in place;
she was placed on an old door,
an astonished look on her face.

Not quite a royal procession,
but with a certain ceremony,
that gal’s father carefully steered
his makeshift ambulance across town,
the prow of his vehicle headed westward.
Townspeople turned their heads at the sight.

They arrived at the hospital,
with that gal supine on a door;
Dad: “Girly, you arrived in style.”
Thus, was born the legend and lore.

The town of Clinton transformed into a new-age Camelot,
And the gal on a door its very own Lady of Shallot.

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John RC Potter is an international educator from Canada, living in Istanbul.  He has experienced a revolution (Indonesia), air strikes (Israel), earthquakes (Turkey), boredom (UAE), and blinding snow blizzards (Canada), the last being the subject of his story, “Snowbound in the House of God” (Memoirist). His poems, stories, essays, and reviews have been published in a range of magazines and journals, most recently in The Serulian (“The Memory Box”), The Montreal Review (“Letter from Istanbul”), Erato Magazine (“A Day in May 1965”), & New English Review (“From Vaisler Brothers to Tel Aviv”).  His story, “Ruth’s World” (Fiction on the Web) was nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize.