Governor Palin’s Ride

 

Listen, my children, and you shall hear

Of Palin’s requital for snubs severe

From electable candidates, in 2008:

Hardly a politico can now relate

He remembers that famous time and year.

 

She said to her friends,–“If Romney announce

By land or sea from the town tonight,

Tweet a message, or text, don’t let it bounce,

To me or a fan if we lose the limelight,–

One if by land and two if by sea;

And I on somebody’s Harley will be,

Ready to ride and spread the alarm

Through every sex-messaging village and farm,

For the knuckleheads to be up and to arm.”

 

Then she said good-night, and with muffled oar

Silently rowed to Max Factor’s shore;

Meanwhile, her friends, through alley and street

Wandered and watched with eager ears,

Till in the silence around them they hears

The muster of men at the green-room door,

The clink of mugs, and the tramp of feet,

And the shuffling of photo-grenadiers

Slouching down to their marks on the floor.

 

Beneath, they could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,

The watchful night-wind, as it went

Creeping along from tent to tent,

And seeming to whisper, “All is well!”

A moment only they feel the spell,

For suddenly all their thoughts are bent

On a shadowy something far away,

Where the river widens to meet the bay,–

Like literacy, but it’s still the GOP—

A line of black, that bends and floats

On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

 

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and to ride,

 [another “Meanwhile,” Henry, really? Seriously?]

Alarmed that somebody’s boat might be raised by a tide,

Black-jeaned and leathered, with heavy stride,

On a different coast walked Governor Rear

Now she patted the Harley’s side,

Now gazed on the landscape far and near,

But mostly she watched with eager search

The twinkling monitor of the old iPod.

 

And lo! As she looks, on the menu site,

A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!

She springs to the back seat, the angle she turns,

But lingers and gazes, till full on her sight

A second light on the monitor burns!

 

A hurry of Harleys in a village-coast,

A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,

And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark

Struck out by a Hog that flies fearless and fleet:

That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,

The fate of a career was riding that night;

And the spark struck out by that hog, in her flight,

Kindled the launching of Romney to toast.

 

It was one by the village-clock

When she rode into Lexington.

She saw the gilded weathercock

Swim in the moonlight as she passed,

Like a tweety bird already staring aghast.

 

It was two by the village-clock

When she came to the bridge in Concord town.

She heard the bleating of the flock,

And one at the bridge would be first to fall,

Pierced by his own tweeted photo-ball.

 

You know the rest. In the books you have read

How the former governor fired and fled,–

How the GOP regulars gave ball for ball,

From behind each fence and farmyard-wall,

Chasing other knuckleheads down the lane,

Then crossing the fields to emerge again,

While Governor Palin denied it all.

 

 

So in the spotlight did not ride Revere;

Through the night went his cry of alarm

To every Middlesex village and farm,–

A cry of defiance, and not of fear,–

A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,

And a word that shall echo forevermore!

As long as people try to get it right,

Through all our history, if we read,

In the hour of darkness and peril and need,

The people will waken and listen to hear

The hurrying hoof-beat of that steed,

And the midnight-message of Paul Revere.

 

 (“The liars are winning! The liars are winning!”)