“I have done it by hard work and long hours.”
Lester “Mike” Pearson, in his memoirs, 1972
“Don’t take life too serious … it ain’t no how permanent.”
Walt Kelly
Mike Pearson and Walt Kelly
came into my dream last night, and said,
“Remember us?”
They looked the same as the last time I saw them,
about fifty years ago.
Mike wanted to know
what kind of job I’d been doing,
to keep things on the straight and narrow.
He wasn’t pleased to hear that I bailed south for a while.
Walt was glad that children put
Okeefenokee in their poems.
They were two of my Dads, growing up.
My life’s pretty good, all things considered.
Things have moved along since the Suez crisis,
but not in a direction
that would make them happy.
I would like to paint a picture
of their ruddy round faces,
wreathe each one
with a ribbon of words that
they could read aloud to each other –
Nobel prize acceptance speech and
“Deck Us All with Boston Charlie”.
It gave me such pleasure to see how they still fit together,
sturdy and sure of themselves,
and hear their choice comments about
how we’ve fucked it all up.
No one could say it like them –
“I have met the enemy, and he is us.”
