Friendly Kidnap Poem by Boghos Artinian

With immense joy I met my cousin again
after sixty-eight years of separation.
'Your father, uncle Luther, taught me how to swim.
He also taught me how to ride a bicycle.
He was a very talented violinist
and Istill remember his recitalat West Hall.
You were a cute child and I often carried you;
Your eyes were blue like your mother's eyes
but now they seem to have changed to brown.'
She eventually remembered that at seventeen
she had 'kidnapped' me when I was two years old
and had taken me aboard a tramcar to her home
in another suburb of the city.
My mother had been terribly upset
and had hastily sent my father
after her to 'liberate' me.
I also was highly upset to learn,
even after seventy years had passed,
that she had gotten into such mischief..