"Ballade For the Media"

"Ballade For the Media"

(written for the posting about the "Silly Season" article by Old Fashioned Liberal)

"All things have their season, and in their times all things pass under heaven....
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak." [Ecclesiastes 3:1,7]

A child on a playground was bored in the cold:
("A Christmas Story" fits well to days like these.)
"You'll shoot your eye out kid" the adults did scold.
His boredom deadly fruit of such stern decrees
And schoolroom edicts writ by advanced degrees.
While his parents quarreled over morning toast
If "Fra-gee-lee" might be an Italian cheese,
A child froze his tongue to a nearby lamppost.

The newsman hunts on his failing search for gold
In Silly Season, when fruitless are the trees:
No war nor scandal, (how can papers be sold?)
No terror, no rescue, no fear, hate, or sleaze;
Dirt from the dull elite he just cannot squeeze;
A newsless day's the terror that he fears most,
But he won't wait for important men to sneeze...
"A child froze his tongue to a nearby lamppost."

When Zachariah in Herod's temple old
Saw Gabriel appear, he fell to his knees:
"A son you'll have: John, the Forerunner foretold" -
This newsflash though great good, with doubt Zach did seize
But Gabe the Announcer was no gentle breeze:
Commanded that Zach might thus learn not to boast
"You doubt? Then till he's born I bid your tongue freeze!"
A child froze his tongue to a nearby lamppost.

O anchor-being who sits at mike or keys,
Whose name, voice, and face are known from coast to coast:
Freeze thou thine own tongue, be silent if you please.
A child froze his tongue to a nearby lamppost.

started 1/22, finished 1/23 2009