What if I wrote a poem so wonderful
an editor for the New Yorker,
who just happened to be perusing the Internet,
jumped out from under his toupee,
hopped around the room like a 5 year-old
on a sugar high,
called to his assistant
and shouted, “Get me in touch with Wayne Scheer!”
What if I happened to answer the telephone
and not let it go to voice mail
as I usually do
because editors rarely call me
and salespeople for security alarm systems
who just happen to be in my neighborhood
often do.
What if this editor wants to pay me
quadruple my monthly
Social Security check for my poem
and asks me to send him more
so he can make my work a regular feature,
offering the kind of money
that would pay off our car
and allow us to replace our roof?
No doubt I’d unload hundred of poems on him
and knock off hundreds more.
And what if the Pulitzer people are so impressed
they offer me a prize,
and the Nobel folk offer me a trip to Stockholm?
I’d have to buy a new suit, new shoes.
Thoreau warned us to beware of any enterprise
that requires a change of clothes
and not a change of character,
but what if my character isn’t strong enough?
What if I buy two new suits, new shoes,
even new sneakers,
and I travel the world pontificating on poetic principles?
What then? What if all that travel means
I don’t have time at night to sit with my wife
and watch television or weed the garden
or play computer chess or walk in the woods?
What then?
Thoreau refused a gift of a welcome mat
for his cabin in the woods
because he feared if people wiped their feet
before entering his home,
he’d be obliged to sweep the floor
and that would take time away from more important things
like reading and tending to his beans.
Better to stop evil before it starts, he concluded.
So, if this poem knocks the socks off an editor
I’ll….
take the money and run.
The hell with Thoreau and his dusty cabin.
Wayne Scheer has locked himself in a room with his computer and turtle since his retirement. (Wayne’s, not the turtle’s.) To keep from going back to work, he’s published hundreds of short stories, essays and poems, including Revealing Moments. https://issuu.com/pearnoir/
—Art by So-Ghislaine