Swearing-in: 1923 and 2021 - a ballad

Jan Seale

January 7, 2021

Calvin Coolidge at his homestead in Vermont

heard in the night a sheriff’s knock.

The messenger said Warren Harding was dead.

Imagine for Coolidge the shock!

But his father, a notary public, commanded

with New England verve, as though he had planned it,

 “Son, to the parlor! Now raise your right hand.”

There by kerosene lamp in the pre-dawn damp,

Calvin Coolidge swore to be President.

Now, a store-keeper/farmer was Coolidge the elder.

So they asked him later, “What kind of feller

would presume to swear in to the highest office

his very own son as our nation’s defender?”

With granite reserve and a countenance wooden,

Old John replied, “Nobody told me I couldn’t.”

Taking our cue from this store-keeper/farmer,

full of fatherly pride and American ardor,

we’ve gone and elected a new president

to live as the White House resident.

Some told us we definitely shouldn’t,

and others, that we definitely wouldn’t,

But nobody told us we couldn’t.

So here’s to the inauguration!

Please, no bifurcation!

Let’s pause for a while, give chase to guile,

and enjoy an earned celebration.

Yes, some told us we shouldn’t,

some told us we wouldn’t,

but nobody told us we couldn’t.

Jan Seale is the 2012 Texas Poet Laureate. She writes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, her latest being A Lifetime of Words, from Lamar University Literary Press. Published soon will be a book of poems about small things, Particulars. She lives five miles from Mexico in deep South Texas and is enjoying the warm winter and migrating birds.