- Keeper
Inspirational Story
Golly was big and retarded and raised
To rescue our town from its fear and malaise.
Bullied in grade school and Michigan-braised,
Golly would save us in magical ways.
His dad was a banker, his mother a nurse,
Two dead infant brothers and third times the curse.
But Golly was loved and prepared for the worst;
"I’m different but special," he heard and rehearsed.
So Golly—though big and retarded—behaved
As though he was able in school and in play.
He frowned out his grammar, he worried the flute,
He tried out for baseball, he danced in a suit.
Did little by little our hearts start to melt?
Well sure (that’s the story I’m here now to tell)…
Of Edgeville I’ll say there was not much to say—
Our wins were behind us and faded away.
But Golly arrived to remind us of love,
To carry our hearts like a dove in a glove.
And wouldn’t you know it? Would you believe?
We did start to wear our prim hearts on our sleeves:
The new churches flourished; the bakeries, too.
The panda bear birthed eighteen cubs at our zoo.
And smiles and kindness abounded in kind.
And once grumpy misers now offered the time.
The Unions quit drinking, the mayor went straight.
The perverts de-penis’d, the track team won state.
And not since the lynching of Randall McGee
Had Edgeville remembered what it was to be
Stalwart and helpful and humble and free—
In touch with one’s neighbors, the council, the trees.
The war came and college; the rumble of life.
Some of us married or sought a new life.
I stayed and I settled and wedded my girl.
We worked and we saved, made a baby, a girl.
When Golly dropped dead at age twenty-three
The Edgeville Gazette ran a full page story:
"Five hundred people attended the wake.
A light has gone out like a boat on a lake."
Things now are different, at times I don’t know
Just which way we’re headed or how this’ll go.
The shadow’s returning. Already I see
Some windows are closing, some doors don’t swing free.
And nights in the kitchen, the microwave on,
I sit and I wonder what rights stop what wrongs.
Our new baby’s coming; just where will it live?
What will it take and just what will it give?
Golly was big and retarded and raised
To rescue us all from our fear and malaise.
Changes don’t come, just don’t happen; they’re made.
A fume or a drug… my wife slips in the glade.
Was slow as a hammock, dumb as a screw—
