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Dear Wendy: I'm sending this poem for the book of poems instead of the ha= ikus I never sent. The title is "Murder". Liz S. (11/1/98) Murder Parkinsons murders some of its victims though supposedly we die of other stuff. When I swallow, Parkinsons chokes me. It throws me off balance when I walk. At different times in the last couple of years, It has knocked me down cement stairs, dashed my head on bricks, slammed me on a street, strained the tendons in a shoulder, cracked a rib, and fractured a hip. While I was waiting to see the surgeon recently, a bent woman with a walker smiled at me as she pushed by and so did a down-jacketed, slow-walking man with a cane, like members of a fraternity. Another member and I shared war stories, both of us caged in walkers. We compared our frequent falls -- unpredictable as the way eucalyptus branches come crashing down on a warm and windless summer day. While I sat for five weeks, mending, with my new stainless steel hip, the sweet man for whom I=92ve cooked since we married cooked for me. When I came home from the hospital my cat avoided me in my walker for a week, then finally settled by me, purring, and rubbed it with his jaw and cheeks. My family and friends warn me to be careful, go slow, chew carefully. I did and do. I=92m not sure =91careful=92 is enough.