Poetry

Barracking for Obama

Derek Fenton

 

It feels like it did all those years ago:

close your eyes and picture the quiff and smile.

Promise of Camelot, no hint of guile,

until that day in November, a blow

to baby boomers’ hopes for the future.

Now barrack for Obama, a new dawn,

a surgeon for the brave new world is born

who fixes gaping wounds with a suture.

 Country like a patient anaesthetised:

a trusting smile on a slumbering face

surrendering itself to healing hands;

but what lurks there, on that table disguised,

waiting to ride on a needle stick trace?

A virus we hope Obama withstands.