The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Paul Grayson

Darling

We were driving somewhere, anywhere—

I in my nineties,

Lucia in her eighties—

Two widows in the back,

When I said,

We turn right at the next corner, Darling.

He said "darling," said the first widow;

Yes, he said "darling," said the second.

Restoration Poem

Charles the Second, aggrieved monarch—

His father decapitated,

He is a wandering beggar in those years of exile,

Waiting for his triumphal return—

He shakes his head and answers "Nay"

To the Commons in their pursuit of vengeance.

A strange man, a merry man:

Women flowed in and out of his bed

Like water in a sluice.

When one of them exclaimed

"Your majesty! What an honor! What good luck!"

Quoth the king, as he thrust deeply,

"Can the chatter, call me Chuck."