Politics as I first learned about it:
Adlai was my mother’s distant third choice,
no equal to Kefauver and his coonskin cap,
and much less than President Harry,
but she was a loyal Democrat to her bones,
and dutifully volunteered for the crusade
to convince the American public
that Ike was no hero but a mere Republican.
Every Saturday afternoon of that fall,
she marched us off to party headquarters,
an old store front on a forgotten side street,
downstairs from the Odd Fellow’s Hall,
an amalgam of old tables, six folding chairs,
buttons, folders, blue and white campaign posters
and old plank floors, worn smooth and gray.
No one came. The banks and stores closed at noon,
leaving downtown in the care of the bars.
As the afternoons crawled, I memorized
Democratic faces destined for November oblivion,
my mother gave up and read McCall’s,
and I walked my brother from Lincoln to Broad,
counting parking meters and studying the sidewalk.
Each hour the local passed on the viaduct,
shaking the windows and rocking the floor,
the crickets sang in the doorway
and my brother napped in the empty display window.
From sunny days in late summer,
the dust dancing in the warm sunlight,
we passed into darkening October chill,
and no one came, not even an Odd Fellow.
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