For scores of years Dagwood Bumstead’s wide-eyed
Character comic’ly graced the funnies
But on nine/twenty-two/two thousand nine
Elmo, the kid next door, stunned centuries
Of psychiatry in just 3 panels—
Forty-two taut words. “There’s this little girl
At school who likes me, but I don’t like her.
There’s another girl” (lustrous thoughts, like pearls!),
“And I like her, but she doesn’t like me.”
This, bitterly, we all remember well.
But Elmo’s optimistic youth, we see,
Does not envision what we know of hell—
“I’ll sure be glad when I grow up and all
This gets straightened out, Mr. B.” The fall
Impending, as this innocent matures,
Will tax those medics charged with finding cures.
(9/22/09)