Once, I wanted to be Babe Ruth

but now there is just an old echo.

With the original recording have gone

my feet, my arms and hands. With effort I can move them,

but they feel nothing, and so I live in a wheel chair with a battery.

A dream is attractive (even inspiring) in one who can meet, afford, or render it;

stultifying and cruel in one who cannot. Yet I joke on this dream

daily, and my nurses, doctors, sister laugh.

The thing is that it echoes. While I am alive, I have given it up,

and yet it has not entirely given me up.