The Smartest Way Is Always the Easy Way

January 26, 2020

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Nationality and Race/Lunar New Year in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday, which this year is celebrated on January 20^th, and the Lunar, or Chinese New Year, which this year is celebrated on January 25^th.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com .

A Lunar New Year poem for the Year of the White Metal Rat, from the rat’s point of view:

The smartest way is always the easy way.

Hard ways are for pigs or dogs or sheep.

Even fools can take what’s given away,

Yet it takes brains to take what fools would keep.

Earnings are no substitute for winnings,

As life, like rats’ teeth, pierces more than grinds.

Reserve your ruses for the final innings;

One sees the landscape better from behind.

Forget the common lie that labor pays.

Tricks pay by the truckload, not the hour.

Have up your sleeve a clever scheme that plays

Each bright-eyed bush according to its flower.

Remember: This is life, not some ideal

A pumpkin head would like to think is real.

Tiny folk must use their wits for power.

© by Nicholas Gordon

If you enjoyed this poem, please like, comment on, or share it so that it might be seen and enjoyed by others. To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/thesma.html. For more Lunar New Year poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/chinesenewyearpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday/Lunar New Year

1/20: Maybe Dreams Cannot Come True, but They

1/21: Might Not Racism Cut Both Ways

1/22: Maybe This Was Harder than I Thought

1/23: Love Is Far More Various than Race

1/24: Let Your Birth Sign Lie upon Your Chest

1/25: Lest You Leave Your Longings in the Sunshine

1/26: The Smartest Way Is Always the Easy Way