Gabriel Gudding

Ronald Reagan

Where are all the lost and discarded
teddybears gone?
Where did those worn butlers
in the house of
Innocence go?

Are they now cast
low among card games
in some lawless
closet land?

Has something bad befallen
Patched Old Holmes and
Bunny Jake, hapless
beyond the davenport,
far over the
back of the
blank divan?

I tell you
they are playing banjos
and living in messy rooms,
Nancy,
far past the cardigans
beyond the little country band of
hobo flipflops: safe

from those Sandinista
rag dolls. They are living in a
post-Communist state,
Nancy.

They don’t mourn for the
death of
JFK or
M
LK.

The flies in their rooms are only
wafted yarn-snarl; outside,
in the pillow-cuffed weather,
a gull doily zings

and dang if that’s not a hurly bean-bag
on the ecliptic
being the sun, O
the world is heavy
for beings
who were so long carried,
Nancy.

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