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Friday, May 26, 2023

Lines Composed in Pittsford Parking Lot on a Rainy Day by Judith Judson:

 Lines Composed in Pittsford Parking Lot on a Rainy Day

 

Oh the parking lot prowl

Will cause you to growl

As you seek for a free open space

You go round in an arc

Like a gull or a lark

Wheeling in patterns like lace

 

And you've got the fantods

'Cause it's raining stair-rods

As our British relations would claim

You peer through the murk

As you hopefully lurk--

When "At long last!"  You exclaim

 

But she's got three small brats

Three cuddly rug rats

To tuck in and buckle and settle

She hivers and hovers

As she carefully covers

This puts you for sure on your mettle

 

For three claimants behind you

Are there to remind you

That war to the death might ensue

They hunch o'er their wheels

And no sort of appeals

Will budge them—they're sticking like glue

 

Then you’re sure she'll leave soon

But she hangs on until noon

Poking at a device on her lap

She fiddles and fidgets

Employing her digits

While the children take a nice nap

 

We all wait and we wait

But she'll gae her ain gait

She cares not for tide nor for time

She's scolding her spouse

(That philandering louse)

While I think up a penultimate rhyme

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well she leaves at long last

With a smart snooty blast

On her ponderous SUV's horn

She's deliberately sat there

Decided to squat there

To convey her suburbanite scorn

 

Well those three other chaps

Have found places perhaps

Leave you of course holding the bag

So you finally park

Having lost any spark

You feel like a limp, worn out rag

 

Thus the parking lot story

At least was not gory

Though full of frustration and grief

But I shared my despair

And I now will declare

It was, thank you, an enormous relief!

 

                                                                        Judith Judson

 

 

--With apologies and thanks to Sir William Schwenk Gilbert

 

(The Lord Chancellor's song from Iolanthe)

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