Lou Orfanella
Why Some Get 100 Years While Most of Us Don’t, or Why 78 Plus 4 Will Never Equal 100
It started an hour before daylight
The life well lived
The lessons well taught
My eyes well up watching the
Memorial services and funeral of
James Earl Carter, Jimmy, 39th president
This was a man who admitted to lusting in his heart
But who was never seduced
By power or glamour or the spotlight
I’ve never seen the scorebook of the
Great beyond but I imagine
That you get so many points for each
Sunday school lesson taught
Then so many more for each
Habitat for Humanity nail hammered into place
The oval office was never his natural environment
Much preferring a front porch in the Georgia sunset,
Happy being the best-known peanut farmer
This side of fellow southerner
North Carolina’s Jim Catfish Hunter,
While earning his hundred years a day at a time
Lou Orfanella is the author of the poetry collections Radical Acceptance and Unexpected Guests among many other books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. His essays, columns, reviews, and poems have appeared in periodicals including The New York Daily News, College Bound, English Journal, World Hunger Year Magazine, Discoveries, Teacher Magazine, and New York Teacher. He holds degrees from Columbia University and Fordham University.
Indolent Books and editor Michael Broder are back with another poem-a-day series as a creative response to the threat posed to our democracy by the current presidential administration. The plan is to continue for all 1460 days of the 47th American presidency.
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