Best Efforts

A Bar Mitzvah was planned and I had to be there;
it was clear across town but I’d been there before.
If I failed to attend I knew Max would be sore,
so, allowing for travel, I set out with care.

I had driven no more than a mile or two
when my trusty old car gave a cough and then died.
O it figures! I have to be somewhere, I sighed,
my attention refocused on what I could do.

It was panic enclosed in a windowless vault
as I stepped from my car and considered my fate.
I would have a red face if my entry was late
but in truth there is no way it would be my fault.

On my cell phone I called someone who lived nearby;
there was not a response and it was no surprise.
So I wondered if seeking a stranger was wise,
yet the thought in my panic was give it a try.

Up the drive I meandered to ring a doorbell;
a young man heard my plight and agreed to help out.
Though elation abided with a need to shout,
such emotion was checked for I manage it well.

In his Outlander we sped along the main line;
he assured me I would make my function all right.
Yet on one thoroughfare we both gasped at the sight
of construction along with a large detour sign.

And the wind and the thunder rolled in with cruel pelt;
there were meteors falling, exploding at will.
I concede my hyperbole is overkill;
alas, with such impedances, that’s how I felt!

He agreed to drive quicker, my young, helpful friend;
he was surely in tune with my need to arrive.
With the kindness of strangers you often survive;
with some strangers pure kindness is what they extend.

We arrived in the parking lot with time to spare
if you think that a handful of seconds is cool.
But in my careless haste I felt much like a fool
when I snagged my new slacks and a rip came to bear.

Then I entered El Emeth with it’s golden dome;
I was given a yamaka--Max shook my hand.
In his eyes I could see that he did understand;
he made me feel at ease when he uttered, “Shalom.”


40 Lines (Anapestic Tetrameter)
Writer’s Cramp
September 7, 2013