If Only

If only it would stop raining all the time 

If only the honey bees weren’t in peril 

If only I could hear better at the movies 

If only Clifton would get a First Watch (Panera) 

If only they raised the minimum wage to $16

If only more of my shirts had pockets

If only the county fair had more rabbits 

If only Facebook would stop spreading hatred 

If only my line dancing class met more often

If only they found a cure for Parkinson’s

If only the years wouldn’t speed by so quickly 

If only postage stamps still cost a dime 

If only our sheepdogs came back to life

If only they’d get rid of the Electoral College 

If only Cincinnati’s air were purer

If only I was better at small talk

If only my wife would like to go camping 

If only the trolley ran to Clifton 

If only a million species didn’t face extinction

If only Elizabeth, Bernie, and Joe were two decades younger 

If only our phone company could get rid of scam calls

If only our family weren’t all far away

If only Netanyahu favored a two-state solution

If only they’d bring back Patti Page 

If only the doctor would renew my Ambien prescription 

If only ice cream was good for you 

If only I walked 10,000 steps every day

If only our arts center could find a new home 

If only the Enquirer actually covered the news 

If only the Bengals would win the Super Bowl 

If only my brothers were still alive 

If only Sherrod Brown had run for president 

If only our sink would stop getting clogged

If only I understood more about Zen Buddhism

If only I could run as fast as when I was 13

If only I could speak to my parents one more time 

If only the Easter Bunny turned out to be real 

If only…

Plaints of the Letter Z

Probably I shouldn’t fret

A true honor, being one of only twenty-six

But hardly an honor to be stuck at the end

We Z’s get short shrift

Webster’s dictionary has 953 pages

The Z’s begin on page 952

Does this strike you as just?  Logical?  

So disheartening for the grade schoolers named Zimmerman

whose daily activities are arranged alphabetically

They are fed up with being Z’s (as they well should be)

Zimmerman is the most common Z-name

but it’s not among the most popular twenty

Not even the top fifty

In fact it is number 379

Zhang comes in second at 472

In ancient times this was not the case

Practically everyone in the Old Testament is named Z

Zacharias, Zebedee, Zephaniah, Zelophehad

Zair, Zareah, Zedekiah, Zeeb, Zion

Zuzims, Zorobabel, Zophar, Ziza,  

and 131 more of our clan

Calligraphers admire Z as the most elegant

Like a bolt of lightning

Or the zig-zag trail of a mountaineer

scaling the face of El Capitan

Z is sharper than S, more fulsome than J

Twice as dynamic as our staid cousin N

And Zzz is among the most melodious of sounds

The gentle breathing of a sleeping newborn

Or the hiss of a snake-mother guarding her snakelets

Just ask yourself this question

Where would we be without zinnias, zebras, zithers,

zephyrs, zoologists, the zodiac, Renee Zellweger

Were it not for zygotes, the human race would be extinct

These are matters crying out for public discussion

Please try not to be zany when you next meet a Z

Whaam! by Roy Lichtenstein: An Ekphrastic Poem

Skipper and I were four when they bombed Pearl Harbor 

Our childhoods unfolded in the midst of the war 

In the back yard we fought in French trenches 

Battled the Nazis, attacked the Japanese 

Stormed the mock beaches as invading Marines

But nothing was more exciting than the Air Force

B-29s delivering their pay loads

Fighters taking off from aircraft carriers

And here, a P-51 Mustang destroying a Nazi fighter

It’s hard to imagine such courage

High in the sky, mortal clashes with enemy pilots

Google supplied these sobering facts

Twenty-three thousand American aircraft

Were lost in combat in World War II

Seventy-five thousand airmen died 

We owe these heroes eternal gratitude