Mustard

I parodied Tennyson’s Locksley Hall,

as if the speaker were a dinosaur:

‘O Percy Triceratops! O Percy!

O dreary swampnose! O dear Percybone!’

Sounds bad and it wasn’t even that good.

Still, at the time, I was hurt my dinos

at Victoria’s gate were not as loved

as that poem about Grampa’s rare coins.

No, those were not coins used in automats.

They were octagonal, iodine-stained,

embossed with moustached dictators,

clutched in line while waiting for winter soup.

Years later, of course, I accepted it.

I knew Dinosaur Nell was just saying:

better a day as cauliflower broth

than millennia as ballpark mustard.