Not Sitting On A Gate
(after the style of Lewis Carroll's "A-sitting On A Gate")
ABABCDCD

I’ll tell you what I think I know
There’s so much I could tell
about a man who’s aging slow
but knows for whom the bell
now tolls. Like Donne and Hemingway,
who thought to speculate
upon the coming of the day
when living would abate.

For “Seniors” who’ve not yet expired:
Still useful can we be?
For us who’ve labored (now retired)
to raise a family,
how best can we imagine that
which never lived nor will:
“a grin without a Cheshire-Cat”
(a Lewis Carroll frill).

So much for Fantasy. Alright.
What of its sibling, Fiction?
Does that require unique insight
and/or inspired conviction?
We’re told “Suspending Disbelief”
establishes connection.
Contact your Editor-in-Chief
if you require direction.

Speaking of whom, this magazine
for twenty years or longer
on monitor and cell-phone screen
has only gotten stronger.
The “Old Man’s” Team (not just himself)
deserves from these grey cheeks --

a thousand thanks from “off the shelf”
to neither Leprechaun nor Elf,
a surname not as rare as “Delph,”
who lives in Canada near Guelph --

Of whom this old man speaks