"Happy the Man" - by John Dryden

John Dryden (1631-1700)
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"Happy the Man"

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
Be fair or foul or rain or shine
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.   

"The Barbara Bush Blues" - by Rohan Preston

Star Tribune Sunday, September 25 • 2005

The Barbara Bush Blues
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By Rohan Preston | Star Tribune Staff Writer
"So many of the [displaced] people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this [chuckle], this is working very well for them." Barbara Bush, Houston, September 2005.

Poor people everywhere:
hope for disaster, displacement, flood,
pray for mudslides, earthquakes, wildfires —
for that's when the going really gets good!
Pray to be flushed out of your home — to watch it float away to rot; pray to end up in the Astrodome on a little Red Cross cot.
Away from the 'hood, you get nutritious food and free dental care; you get coupons to hoity-toity salons that can scrub the goo from your hair.
You get clean clothes, deodorant soap
and warm water to wash;
you get all this and most every wish —
plus a tidy bit of cash.
True, you may lose some of your little bums and your minimum-wage job, but these are just blips: after the apocalypse you live high on the hog.
So, clasp your hands and pray to join the
thousands living large and scot-free!
They've got such good gravy, forget First Lady - I wanna be an evacuee.
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Rohan Preston is at rpreston@startribune.com.