Author's Note: When I first came across President Gerald Ford’s family slogan, I immediately memorized it—for the homespun flavor, the humor, the wonderful way anapests are broken by a single spondee.  I knew this slogan might make a good refrain, but it took several years before I found a proper kyrielle form variation.  Then there were several months of drafts until I felt I might be close in other lines to the deadpan seriousness I’d hoped the poem might achieve.  What resulted is my small tribute to the still under-appreciated President Ford and his leadership.

My wife and I have visited The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he and Mrs. Ford are buried.  For childhood confusion reasons, the city always  makes me think of Post Grape-Nuts flakes.


Kyrielle
“Tell the truth, work hard, come to dinner on time.”
                                  —family slogan of President Gerald Ford

When you enter our village, a welcoming sign
Gives you advice: Try not to whine.
Don’t fish in dry creek beds.  Don’t nickel and dime.
Tell the truth, work hard, come to dinner on time.

Here’s Main Street.  Look down it.  There’s our town hall,
Our non-fancy bar in our nondescript mall
Where we take our drinks straight, neither lemon nor lime.
Tell the truth, work hard, come to dinner on time.

You scoff at our quaintness, how stick-in-the-mud
You think people who live here—cows chewing their cud.
Everyone caught in the same paradigm:
Tell the truth, work hard, come to dinner on time.

But what are your slogans?  How hard should you work?
Who cuts your corners?  What spites make you smirk?
You mock our mundane.  You subvert our sublime
Tell the truth, work hard, come to dinner on time.

Can you heal a nation as Gerald Ford could?
When the auctioneer’s chanting, what will you bid?
Whether you write it in gold or in grime,
Tell the Truth, work hard, come to dinner on time.