A topic that’s still on the table
That we should discuss, since we’re able
Is whether or not
The prez that we’ve got
Is really a genius that’s stable.

A stable is also, of course,
A place that’s a home for a horse
And perhaps there, indeed,
Is a very smart steed
That’s a genius who grazes on gorse.

But that’s not what our leader, alas,
Meant when he let those famous words pass.
He was doing his part
Proving he is, like, smart
Like a horse (or that animal’s ***!)

We get there with the kids asleep,
Too early for the sun.
We have some coffee quietly,
To not wake anyone.

When Hadley wakes, my husband goes
To scoop her if she cries.
I hear her giggle with delight
From tickles he supplies.

But Henry, ever since the time
He moved into a bed,
Gets up and lifts the shades to greet
The day that lies ahead.

He flips the light switch, turns the ****
And opens up his door,
Then sits himself right by the stairs
Upon the hallway floor.

He knows on Fridays I’ll be there
But doesn’t make a sound,
Just sits and waits most patiently
Until I come around.

Of course, I listen carefully
To hear a telltale clue,
So he’s not waiting long before
We both come into view.

His face lights up and so does mine;
I scamper up the stairs.
We share a great big hug-a-mug;
Nothing else compares.

The time will come, as Henry grows,
And much to my regret,
That he will tire of this routine
Though I will not forget.

The railroad ride was smooth as silk
Though it was ten degrees.
The train was just a minute late –
No time to feel the freeze.

We passed through towns of snow-topped homes
While sitting warm and snug,
The ticket taker’s attitude
As friendly as a hug.

But at Grand Central, we got off
And had to make a switch
To ride the city subway;
Let’s enumerate each glitch:

The crowded platform packed with people
Cursing the delays;
The trash-strewn tracks accruing more
On which the rats will graze.

Announcements stating that all trains
Are locals, not express;
Yet finally, we cram on board
As all those bodies press.

We go one stop and then the doors
On certain cars won’t close.
We’re ordered off and stumble out –
Well, that’s the way it goes.

We grab a cab and make it home
And think of those two trains –
Whatever calm the rail provides,
The subway quickly drains.

The year now ebbs; the clock goes tick
And I’m at home and feeling sick
So even though it’s New Year’s Eve,
There is no party up my sleeve.

We were invited to a bash
But sometimes, quicker than a flash,
Your plans go ****! and you are stuck
Out of the loop and out of luck.

I’m sure the party will be fun
And I’ll miss seeing everyone
Though I’ll veg out on “Twilight Zone”
And thankfully, won’t be alone.

For as these final hours do creep,
My hub and I will fall asleep
And maybe wake up when we hear
The countdown to the brand-new year.

Yet even if we miss the toast,
We’ll have what really matters most –
Each other and our friends and kin
To welcome 20-18 in!

You’re out to stroll or on a bike,
A lovely day, a sky of blue,
When suddenly, a terror strike
And sadly, that’s the end of you.

We hear the news; we’re stunned and shocked.
The TV shows the blurry tape.
The perpetrator’s plan, half-cocked,
Did not allow him to escape.

Investigations start, but still,
The wounded ache, the dead are gone.
We’re horrified, but know the drill –
We move along and carry on.

Oh, trusty eraser,
You error replacer,
I thank you for clearing the way,
Preventing disgrace
When I cannot embrace
Words I’ve chosen which do not hold sway.

Just one swipe of your being
Gives way to me seeing
A blank where a blunder has been
So I’m once again free
To discover the key
Which will help me again to begin.

On computers, “delete”
Is a method discreet
To remove words that don’t make the grade
But eraser, you meet
All my needs as you greet
What my pencil has wrongly displayed.

She stands there in knickers,
A cap on her head,
Looking tomboyish, truant and tough
And a cigarette dangles
From unsmiling lips
To warn all she’s not taking their guff.

It’s a sepia snapshot,
The 20’s, I’d guess,
The photographer long in his grave,
But the girl is my grandmother
Though I’ll admit
It’s an image she’d choose not to save.

All the years that I knew her,
So quiet and prim,
Don’t quite match with the face in the frame.
That’s the reason I treasure
This photo of old,
‘Cause both Jennys were one and the same.

Outside the confines of our homes
The world just barrels by.
Events from news reports
Are far away and don’t apply.

We watch them from our bubbles,
Witness sorrow and despair.
The sadness fills the screen
But we are here and that is there.

Unless, of course, we’re visiting
Or living in the place
Where destruction, death and anguish
Have descended, face to face.

Only then are we reminded
That, though victims may be reeling,
Not a soul who isn’t in it
Can imagine what they’re feeling.

Which train will come, I’ll try to guess
But that won’t really help my stress.
It’s building up as crowds surround
Creating quite the urban mess.

The tourists all must think we’re nuts
To cram on platforms where such gluts
Of humans stream without an end
To pack so tight we’re touching butts.

Announcements say the train is near.
We crane our necks; no lights appear.
Then suddenly the rumble sounds
Of braking by the engineer.

The subway’s stuffy, cramped and late.
It does its best to aggravate
But all that we can do is wait
And that is what we do; we wait.

(apologies to Robert Frost)

The tix are free so people wait
For hours, sitting on the grass,
But we are old; to compensate
There is a bench to plop one’s ***.

By half-past eight, the benches filled,
The ticket-seekers settle in
While late arrivals, not too thrilled,
Allow the side-show to begin.

They make us move so they can squeeze
Their bodies on a proper seat,
Without the courtesy of “Please”
(Ticked-off, no doubt, at their defeat).

A flutist sets his stand and plays;
A grouchy woman bids him cease.
He grumbles when nobody pays,
His music, though, a sweet release.

The conversations ebb and flow.
We people watch (the pickings fine).
I bond with folks I do not know;
That happens on the senior line.

The hours pass; we get our tix.
We’ll meet again when it gets dark
To share in summer’s yearly fix
Of seeing Shakespeare in the Park.

Going to a wedding -
We will watch them tie the knot.
It’s nice to know that younger folk
Still give this thing a shot.

I’ll get myself all gussied up
(That word is proof I’m old),
Although I’m not the dress-up type
Most times, if truth be told.

The ceremony’s out of doors,
A garden the location
And then we’ll head inside to dine
And dance in celebration.

Originally weathermen
Predicted it would rain.
The sun decided otherwise,
The worries all in vain.

I’m sure it will be lovely
But the main thing that I think
Is, with all the preparation,
It’s all over in a blink.

A terrorist’s a criminal and also a fanatic
Who gets his kicks by killing and creating quite a panic.
His hatred makes him dangerous but fear’s his only goal
And crowded places let him play a tragic leading role.

Our president, in his attempts to be a tough accuser,
Must think he sounds impressive with the label “evil loser”
But loser is an epithet from junior high school days
And such a term deserves derision, though he’d longed for praise.

The world will turn to leaders in a horrible event
In hopes that their response will calm things down and thus prevent
More dread and malice from their ranks, with words that will inspire,
Yet “loser” is the best to which our ruler can aspire.

Times Square was once a ****** place;
You wouldn’t go alone there.
When darkness fell, you held on or
You’d lose all that you owned there.

Today, though, it’s like Disney World,
With tourists, loud and surging.
There’s not an inch of space unfilled
Since everyone’s converging:

The families from Idaho,
The hawkers giving passes,
The Elmos and the messengers,
The bused-in high school classes…

The lunch-break workers, homeless dudes,
The theater geeks and shoppers,
The food carts, cabbies and the cops
And all the teenyboppers.

I love New York; don’t get me wrong
But oftentimes I wonder
If gentrifying Broadway
Might have been a whopping blunder.

The blood that’s coursing through our veins
We see in random drops,
But most of it flows on its paths
Until the day it stops.

The neurons firing in our brains
Send information on,
Accomplishing their duties
‘Til the moment we are gone.

The muscles that each bone sustains
Enable us to move,
Though as we age, they slow things down,
With nothing left to prove.

The organs, set in their domains,
Perform without a pause.
They pump and filter, that despite
The damage that we cause.

Our bodies work through stress and strains
Without our even knowing
And when we die we never pay
The debt to them we’re owing.

Here’s to the mothers who sit there alone –
No flowers, no candy, no calls on the phone.
Here’s to the moms in a hospital bed
Who would rather be anyplace other instead.

Here’s to the soldier moms, hoping for smiles
On a screen or an I-phone, connecting the miles.
Here’s to the mamas locked up in a jail,
Convinced that their cards just got lost in the mail.

Here’s to all mothers and nanas and aunts
United today by just one circumstance –
They have shared in the life of a child in some way
And deserve recognition, somehow, on this day.

I’m riding the subway (the 4)
Where you never know what is in store.
A character stood
Ranting loudly he should
Have a seat, which I tried to ignore.

His ravings got louder until
Someone rose to accede to his will.
Though he sat with a plop
His harangue didn’t stop
And we passengers’d all had our fill.

But the woman who sat to his right
Started cursing with all of her might,
Saying either he’d quit
Or she’d have such a fit
That she’d slice him to bits in a fight.

A Samaritan did intercede
So we never saw anyone bleed.
When the doors opened wide
He stepped quickly outside
With the ranter, a very cool deed.

The female, though, kept up her shtick;
Her anger was what made her tick.
I questioned the stars
Thinking, with all these cars,
Why was this one the one I did pick?

Obama makes a speech and earns
Four hundred thousand bucks.
Of course he is entitled but
The whole world sighs and clucks.

I frankly don’t think anyone
Deserves that kind of dough
But obviously that’s the rate
For people in the know.

It saddens me a little bit
For such a fee seems greedy,
Especially for someone who
Once championed the needy.

Ideally he should give his talk,
Accepting what they pay,
Then find a worthy charity
And give it all away.

My husband bought some skinny jeans,
The kind **** Jagger’d wear,
Which cling real tight from ankle
To the thigh and derriere.

They came today, from Amazon;
He couldn’t wait to try them,
Especially to prove me wrong.
(I’d told him not to buy them.)

I must admit that they look great
And so I couldn’t scoff
But it was pretty funny
When he tried to take them off.

It took a few attempts with lots of
Tugs and yanks and wiggles,
Providing me with quite a bout
Of told-you-so-type giggles.

I’m sure to him he’ll get rewards
In compliments a’plenty,
But he would have it easier
If he were more like 20!

We took a risk; it worked out fine
But not without some stressing,
For everything in life requires
A fair amount of guessing.

Without such chances, we remain
Upon an even keel,
A little bored, perhaps, but hey,
Quite safe – that’s the appeal.

I’m usually risk-averse
But sometimes I get shaken
From my comfort zone and afterwards,
Feel glad it was forsaken.

Oh, to be a person who
Stays cool, calm and collected,
Instead of one whose jangly nerves
Has stressing-out perfected.

To be the one who never sweats,
Whose heart won’t race on faster,
Anticipating something wrong,
From trifle to disaster.

I’d like to feel relaxed and not
Stretched taut with fret and worry
And take my time without the need
To feel that I must hurry.

To rationally make a choice
And never second guess it;
To analyze a situation,
With no need to stress it.

Oh, to be that person!
What a joy that it would be!
The only drawback is, of course,
That it would not be me!

I learned to type the proper way
Instead of hunt and peck,
Most often on a manual.
(Electric was high tech.)

But nowadays when texting
I’m pathetic as one comes
For I seem to be incapable
Of writing with my thumbs.

So every message I compose
My pointer finger taps,
The right one only, I should add –
No tangled overlaps.

I marvel when observing
All the mainly younger folk
As they thumb their words so quickly
While I, turtle-like, do poke.

Number 261* ran a pretty good race.
Though she couldn’t have won it, she set a fine pace.
Her hat hid her hair but if you’d seen her face
You’d have realized she wasn’t a guy.

The year – ’67, a marathon run
In Boston, and soon after it’d begun
Officials decided her racing was done
And her gender the answer to “Why?”

For the course was for men; anyone called “her”
Had to skip it or hide who they really were.
K.V. Switzer she signed as, so they’d infer
That a male was the one to apply.

She resisted attempts to drag her away
And completed those miles, ignoring the fray.
Yet it took 5 more years, quite a lengthy delay,
‘Til the rule-makers had to comply.

Now at 70, Switzer, still true to form,
Ran in Boston, to welcomes both loud and warm.
Her gutsiness once took the world by storm
And her triumph no one can deny.

*Kathrine Switzer’s Boston Marathon number
  in both the 1967 and 2017 races

Some noises startle, jolt or jar
While others soothe or soften.
We perk up for the new but tune out
Those we hear quite often.

To locals, city sirens make
The tiniest impression
But visitors consider them
A barbarous transgression.

The hum of traffic rolling by
To urbanites equates
With cricket chirps or chickadees
In countryside debates.

The noises that surround us
Are as varied as our homes
Or the subjects and the wording
Of a plethora of poems.

The passengers were in their seats
When something was announced –
Employees had to fly and so
Four people would be bounced.

Requests with compensation
Met with silence, so United
Chose some “random” ticket holders
To deplane and thus ignited

Quite a controversy, since one man
Just out and out refused.
His ****** removal left him
Furious and bruised.

The gentleman, a doctor,
Had some patients to attend to.
United workers didn’t care;
Nor did they pretend to.

Of course, the scene was filmed
And now those so-called “friendly skies”
Will be filled with cancellations
As the rage intensifies.

The Justices are back to nine
According to the planned design.
It should have happened months before
But those in power slammed that door.

So now we’ll have to wait and see
For there is just no guarantee
When hearing from the nine Supremes
That what is real is what it seems.

Things may turn out as we believed
Or maybe we will be relieved.
In any case, the deal is done;
A brand-new era has begun.

A movie’s like a novel
With a vista to explore
Which, assuming it’s a good one,
Leaves you wanting even more.

Yet I’ve recently discovered
Something else that quite transports –
It’s a genre that at film fests
Is referred to as “the shorts.”

Several films are shown together
For an hour and a half,
An assemblage that’s so varied
You may cry or scream or laugh.

Every subject matter’s different;
All the settings are, as well
And each film’s uniqueness feels
Like the director’s cast a spell.

Yet just like a full-length feature,
Each short gem seems quite complete
And, when viewed as a collection,
It’s a cinematic treat.

We teach our children not to stare
But human nature bests us
For seeing someone not the norm,
Despite our efforts, tests us.

The wheelchair-bound, the little folk,
The scarred and the tattooed;
To all who differ from the rest,
Our eyes get drawn and glued.

Of course, we quickly turn away
(Except the rude, who don’t)
But even just that little glance
Reminds us that we won’t

Be able, from our fragile perch
Upon the status quo,
To understand how life must feel
When people view you so.

What I enjoy might very well be
Something you despise.
The things that light me up may be
Unpleasant to your eyes.

But that’s what makes the world go round;
Variety’s the spice.
What you find unappealing
Could, to me, be paradise.

There are no rights or wrongs when you
Account for someone’s taste.
Endeavors at persuasion,
In most cases, are a waste.

It’s best for all to nod our heads,
Accepting as a fact
That what one finds repellent
May another thus attract.

It’s brilliantly sunny but blustery cold.
The branches are heartily swaying;
And though I grow older, I’m younger than old
(Though I still try to cover the graying).

There’s plenty to time left to savor the days
No matter the sky or the weather,
Though I cannot be sure if a crystal ball gaze
Might reveal myself snapped from my tether.

The future’s a question mark, there’s no debate
So I guess I should live in the now
And delight in the dance that the branches create
For as long as my time will allow.

My grandson traces in a book
To build up pencil skills.
From one car to another
Every wavy line instills

A feeling of accomplishment,
Preparing him to write.
He's like a nested fledgling
Not quite ready to take flight.

I watch him growing; with each step
That baby he replaces
And soon enough, his childhood
Will exist in merely traces.

Not everyone does it, but how I adore
A generous person who works in a store;
Specifically, one who's behind in the deli,
Who slices the meats and the cheese for the belly.

Today, for example, I ordered some cheese
And turkey, my grandson down next to my knees,
His hungry impatience apparent to all;
But just as it seemed he'd resort to a bawl

The counterman offered some turkey, a taste.
Disaster averted and hunger erased.
The guy was a stranger who sized up the scene
Or maybe, to him this was strictly routine.

It doesn't take much to connect with a smile
Yet to many, such actions are not in their style.
The deli employee, for such a small price,
Can improve someone's day just by cutting a slice.

While on the bus, he tapped my arm
And asked me for a pen.
I gave him one and realized
I would not see it again.

He looked to be a homeless guy;
The pen was old and cheap
And had he asked, I would have
Told him it was his to keep.

A few stops later, pen in hand,
He found another seat
And never glanced my way again,
Our interchange complete.

I don’t give coins or dollars
When a beggar makes a plea
But the pen request resounded
With the writing part of me.

If I wanted a reminder
That my life is far from bad
Then I got one when I walked right by
A boy out with his dad.

He was sitting in a stroller,
Looking old for where he sat,
When his father, very gently,
Made adjustments to his hat.

It was then that I took notice,
With the parent’s tender care,
That, most likely, chemo had deprived
The boy of any hair.

How can I complain of problems
When confronted with such grief?
From another man’s perspective,
We face ours with much relief.

You see them perched in windows
Of so many types of stores
But really, they don’t blend at all
In anyone’s decors.

They range in size from tiny
To those taking lots of space,
All with the same expression – blank!
Imprinted on each face.

One waving paw moves up and down
Ad nauseam, to me,
I guess to greet the passersby
In perpetuity.

It blows my mind how such a fad
Gains traction and persists.
My hat goes off to every shop
With keeper who resists.

It’s mounted in my neighborhood,
A market’s one-time lure
To coax a customer with kids
To shop inside the store.

I haven’t seen it used but once
But patiently it waits
Until it’s fed the money
That the coin slot indicates.

And then I guess the gears kick in
To simulate a ride,
Quite thrilling for the city child
Who’s happily astride.

Yet much more time’s spent frozen,
Looking lonely and forlorn,
Its fading paint a testament
To all the butts it’s borne.

A remnant from another age,
This pony was designed
To entertain the children of
An era left behind.

Across the street, on scaffold rigs,
Construction workers hover
And if they’d glance my way, this is
What they just might discover:

A bedroom filled with books and pictures
All in frames of black,
A quilted bed and clutter
I’ve been meaning to attack.

And then, of course, upon a chair,
The other sight they’d see,
With pad and pencil, jotting words,
A rhyming poet – me!

The earth is flat. We'll never die
And unicorns exist.
Olympic athletes never cheat;
Decorum won't be missed.

The sun did shine when Donald Trump
Took office; folks all bowed
Because they formed the largest yet
Inauguration crowd.

When Colbert talked of "truthiness,"
He meant it as a joke.
When lies disguise as facts, our dreams
Will all go up in smoke.