The Roosevelt Comet

Perhaps you’re wondering why our beef

     Has soared to prices way on high?

Perhaps you wonder why relief

     Don’t black the cost of living’s eye?

Perhaps you’ve wondered why the hens

     Don’t lay as they were won’t to do;

Perhaps you’ve wondered why the pens

     Of humorists have all gone blue?

Perhaps you’ve wondered why it’s cold,

     And why it’s wet, and skies are gray;

Why trade is dull and nothing sold,

     And bad luck seems to rule the day?

Perhaps you’ve wondered at the freeze

     That laid our western crops so low;

Perhaps you’ve wondered why our trees

     Won’t bear the peach of long ago?

And so we might go on for aye,

     And death and dire disaster name;

And you, and everyone would say

     That Halley’s Comet is to blame.

But I think that in this they err,

     I think the sorrows of today

Are not from Halley’s Comet, sir,

     But just because T.R.’s away.

April 26, ‘10

(Roosevelt was off on his year-long safari in Africa)