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Perhaps

Daniel just called from Portland, Oregon,
where he is in a rotation for plastic surgery,
at a Veterans Hospital.  It has nothing to do
with Botox or silicon or sandpapering skin
to give you a healthy glow. 

He said that he noticed the office of a veterinarian, nearby,
who specialized in surgery on birds; presumably not plastic.

Mari and I once shared a table at Chanhassan dinner theater
with a veterinarian whose specialty was acupuncture for horses.
He said that it was amazing how much new vigor
horses showed once you poked them with needles. 

"How much business is there for a veterinarian
who specializes in operating on birds?", Mari asked.

"All of it," I suggested.

There is a great kindness in repairing what a damnable war
does, or what wandering genes or an earthquake does to
ordinary people who wish they were ordinary, again.
There is a great madness in sculpting already beautiful
people to neurotic and plastic hopes for self-worth;
in pumping silicon breasts to Holstein proportions, or
inflating lips into horizontal suggestions of a pubertal dream. 

Better, perhaps, to stick needles into horses,
or to give woodpeckers carborundum beaks.

Perhaps.

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