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Comedy |
The Burma Road,
long, hot and viperic,
did witness some levity during the War.
Old Uncle Ryan was known to crack jokes
about those Buddhist monks,
and even later in India, he met Gandhi himself
(or so he said),
commenting later about
the Mahatma wearing a bed sheet on that train.
But I wonder,
when he stole, in glee, a little golden Buddha
from one of those zany monasteries
(I can just hear the guffaws down
green canopies):
IF turnabout reared its ugly cranium
in sweet last-straw revenge;
IF what really went ‘round came ‘round
when his grandson blew his brains out;
IF there was just reward for him
when he watched his dear sweet first wife
wither away in agony;
IF Karma was in the wind
that pushed his ashes
into a hasty digging
out on a remote Ware County grave-patch,
an afterthought of a resting place;
IF humor and disregard
has a deadly serious side
that returns.
copyright 2005
L. Ward
Abel |
