A BIRTHDAY GREETING TO KAY AT EIGHTY
Five years ago, for Kay’s seventy-fifth
A poem was written for no cash or spiff.
Party plans, however, poofed up in smoke
And the shattered poet’s verses went unspoke.
The day has now come to read those verses of yore
But, alas, the aging poet can’t find them anymore.
He tucked them away in the debris of his life
And, despite frantic searching by he and his wife,
The couplets and quips and knee-slapping jokes
Are lost. And so, to you, the partying folks,
This brief piece of poetic, unscanning drivel,
That seems so terse, quaint and trivial,
Is all that he has with which to wish
Kay a birthday greeting at a dinner delish.
Kay! Kay! Kay! You have now reached eighty.
Hurray! Hurray! Hurray! Kudos to Katie.
A poet’s ps to add to that line:
The author’s most pleased to be a friend of thine
For getting on towards thirty-three annum;
Its hard to believe, even harder to fathom.
Happy Birthday, Kay, with love from old friend Jeff,
Who hopes that the grade for this poem isn’t F.
(Hold it! Hold it! I’ll make a mad dash
Up to the attic and in a head-crashing flash
Here’s the old poem, the yellowed verses;
Two poems to read, double the curses.)
2/9/03
KAY SEXTON
LITERARY LIFE
Where to begin when writing of Kay?
So many facets, so much to say.
We could start with her books or her wit –
Or, better yet, let’s go back a bit.
Is ’71, a cold January,
To B. Dalton I came, extremely wary.
Behind a desk most centrally placed,
Sat our Ms. Sexton, the chaos she graced.
Customers were first, the staff came next;
For Kay “policy” was an unread text.
Marlyss and Ken, Helen and Lucy,
Dan and Jeff, she wasn’t real choosy.
We’d take long breaks, and talk ‘bout books,
Smoke Mary Jane and catch odd looks.
Store number One was a great place to grow,
But then they called Kay to the old G. O.
It was there at the heart of the company web
That Kay reached her apex and suffered no ebb.
She was the corp shrink, our company guru,
She had enough balls to tell anyone “screw you.”
She stood fast and hard ‘gainst many a big wig
For their opinions she cared nary a fig.
Ned Dayton and Albright, Pisner and Macke,
To a man they were so damn tacky.
Followed by Floyd, Fontaine, Sells and Swenson,
Kay’s earned every damned penny of her pension.
The publishers, too, ate her words as if meat,
And swallowed every bit of the old ‘green sheet.”
That tatty rag of misspellings and more,
Had become legend, true publishing lore.
The word went out as the gospel truth;
It even spoke well of old Dr. Ruth.
Thousands and thousands of tomes it did hype
And only the buyers had an occasional gripe.
For once-in-a-while, every week or so,
Kay would tout a book to which the buyer’d said “no!”
Then we’d have a little inner office scuffle
And the feather’s of Kay we’d try not to ruffle.
Her sofa, you see, was a vital haven
To escape those moments when we felt too craven,
So business beset we forgot why we cared
About books beyond everything, that’s what we shared.
You see, for us, it was books before all;
Books gave us meaning, to us they did call.
And then, as the days of B. Dalton were waning,
And we felt the corporate leaders needed caning,
We left at a trickle which grew to a flood
That sapped all the joy, drained all the blood
From the heart of the company, from the soul of the crew,
Until it was finally sold to you know who.
Then Kay retired and stayed at the lake.
Her own kind of salon out there she did make.
From out of the city we’d all come for lunch
To sip on a coke with beer nuts to munch.
The chili was steaming, the bread sticks were hot,
The desserts they were eaten, the diets forgot.
The conversations ranged over topics diverse-
Occasionally straying into regions perverse.
We’d gab and we’d gossip on the odd and ironic,
But for all of the visitors it was just the right tonic
To straighten a head, to iron a wrinkle,
Square up an angle, and give us a twinkle.
So lift up a glass, we’ll propose this toast,
Following this most gentle a roast.
Kay, we’re your friends, we’re your family, too,
We can’t help but wish, Happy Birthday to you!
No comments:
Post a Comment