Sunday Driver Poem

MABEL TALKS TO THE WHITE MAN

©2003 Ronald C. Southern

"The thing about a rectangle," the waitress said,
"Is you can get in the corner and hide,
But a circle flows freely and what you fear
Can come at you from any side.

The Indians knew this and liked it," she said,
"But white men have always hated it
And therefore spent centuries killing the Indians
And quelling their culture and pissing on every circle on earth."

Some said that Mabel used to be
An Indian princess from Oklahoma
Or the troubled daughter
Of a Medicine Woman who drank,

But I didn't know anything about things like that
And didn't know anyone who did.
Her name was actually something else,
But I couldn't pronounce it.

"Well, Mabel," I grinned as I paid the bill,
"Being the white man's a goofy job,
A hard-down tireless thankless everlasting job,"
"But somebody's gotta do it."

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