Subsidiarity

I lay at ease upon a summer’s night,
My legionary duckies all arrayed
In serried splendor ’neath my blankie blue—
My Pooh-bear pillow at my left hand laid,
My extra paci hard upon my right.

But as I tarried with a languid coo
At slumber’s gate, I heard a cautious hand
Ease up the bedroom window, whereupon
The King of all the kingdoms of the land
Came, slow and surreptitious, slinking through.

He tittered in the moonlight, pale and wan,
“Misled, well-meaning child, be not afeared:
No error shall escape my lordly sight.
Let then thy pillow, on the Right, rest here—
Thy paci on the Left, till gleaming dawn!”

“Great sir,” I said, “I wot thy word is true,
And grant a good intent in thy command;
But is there not some chain to hang it on
Of lawful lessers in whose place you stand,
And hast thou nothing better else to do?”

But hark and lo! the dimmered hallway light,
And Mummy’s murmured voice, did then invade—
Whereat my princely visitor withdrew,
And as a shadow into shadow fades,
Returned in silence to the shades of night.

Jamey Toner is a down-and-out fighter on the comeback trail.

Find more by Jamey Toner in the Author Index.