ALONG

That Tonto spoke Yiddish was no surprise;
From listening with her youngest to episodes
Of The Lone Ranger my grandmother knew
That Tonto could do almost anything.
After she died, he’d clattered up
To offer her a ride on Scout. They chatted;
Tonto, it turned out, was an orphan too.
He'd never seen Lemberg but had heard
That its streets were wide and that
The second oldest fish in the world
Lived in the waters of the Poltowa.

ESCORT

Her youngest son had, with the best will in the world,

Made her listen to The Lone Ranger five times a week

For six years, so my grandmother Esther recognized

The spirit come to escort her to the next world.

It was Tonto. He was riding Scout, who nodded to her.

She had always suspected Scout was a nicer horse

Than the high-strung Silver, who got all the attention.

Tonto, she knew, spoke every Indian language,

As well as English and some Spanish, so when he smiled

And said bakumen aoyf, Fraulein, she did not gasp

Or ask him where he had learned to speak Yiddish

With a strong Galician lilt, but got up behind

And settled herself to ride through the Badlands.

FAITHFUL INDIAN COMPANION

The Lone Ranger, my grandmother said, was a show-off;
Catch Tonto naming his horse Silver! No, Tonto
Rode Scout, an unobtrusive paint, patient and durable.
Unlike Silver, Scout never needed to be rescued
From an enraged buffalo ("and why was the buffalo mad?
Silver probably said something to insult him.")
My father, 11, who listened in the kitchen
Almost every day, decided he'd know he was old
When he woke up preferring Tonto.

POEM FOR THURSDAY AND THE ANNOUCEMENT OF A COMPETITION

If Laertes, the great king of Ithaka,
Had had a book written about him
We would say of Odysseus what Laertes
Often said to his friends: “A good son;
A nice lad, but really – something of a nebbish.”
(You didn’t know Laertes spoke Yiddish?
Ha! The least of what you don’t know of him!)
So it is; you live your life grandly
And then some luftmensch, some poet,
Likes better how your son's name scans.

Today only: a contest!

First, so far as I know, there was Walt Kelly’s:

I was eatin’ some chop-sooey

With a lady in Saint Looie

When a-sudden comes a knockin’on the door

And the knocker he says “Honey,

Roll this rocker out some money

Or your Daddy shoots a baddie to the floor!

Then my father’s:

I was speaking Esperanto

With my baby in Toronto
When a-sudden comes a knockin’on the door

And the knocker he said “Tonto

You had better get out pronto

‘Cause the milk train doesn’t stop here anymore!

Then mine:

I was in the Bight of Benin

With my buddy V.I. Lenin,

When a-sudden comes a knockin’on the door

And the knocker he says “Trotsky

Things are not so hotsky-totsky

‘Cause St. Petersburg’s not Leningrad no more!

And now, readers few but cherce – mighty cherce – comes your turn. The winning entry will have my approbation – what more could you want?