Immensely Enriched [rev.] Poem by Margaret Alice Second

Just been enriched immensely by the task list
addition of 2 letters to our beloved President;
one written by a self-styled Sir, an unrepentant
reprobate offering himself for the highest office
in our country, yet quite content his frequent
letters remain comment-less, only receiving
an automatic acknowledgement, & the other

From a almost illiterate poor lady begging help
to apply for a state grant as her husband’s bad
back prevents him from working, least it seems
it might be - handwriting is illegible, sentences
lack connective words, ‘hope early reply tired of
suffering, pumpkins, house rent, daughter yard
onions’ - she must grow her own vegetables -

Describing heart-rending events; difficult to pull
myself back from global warming cries as we’re
actually entering a new tho small ice-age; sun’s
an electric phenomenon with spots causing cold
filament streams preparing a deep-freeze for the
northern hemisphere: all this against the even-
cadence rippling streams of my colleagues

Having endless conversations on the telephone
& forcing me to raise IPod volume - swaying to
Johann Strauss while clinging to my desk having
lost my sanity ages ago, living in the Mad Hatter’s
world can be made safe by withdrawing attention
from what others do into a meditative cocoon of
my coming swim in an autumn pool -

Drinking hot tea & coffee with spoons full of sugar
to keep my system going, abstaining from eating
protein, meat only weekly: time to start relaying
the sad one-word exclamations of the Lady-In-
Distress in elegant English for help in her plight,
she needs the sugar spoonfuls more that I do