(on the anniversary of Donald Trump’s election)

When I was in fifth grade, I made my friends laugh
by drawing funny pictures of George H. W. Bush
and Dan Quayle, two people l knew little about
except what I overheard from my parents,

who were decidedly unimpressed with them
as leaders of our country - something to do with
one’s surreptitious disregard for the rule of law
and the other’s apparent lack of intelligence.

I got in trouble when my teacher saw me
making these unflattering caricatures.
But rather than punish me in front of my peers,
her rebuke took the form of lecturing us

on how it’s important to show respect 
even for folks with whom we disagree.
I bore out this reproof patiently, all the while
confused why I should be expected 

to have any regard at all for politicians 
so obviously wrong, as evidenced 
by their poor reputation in my family
and my classmates’ approval of my cartoons.

Thirty years later I feel a twinge of wistfulness 
for the White House duo I mocked; they appear 
like prudent statesmen relative to the current
occupant of our executive branch.

For now we have a president who flouts 
a reasonable code of decency and is lauded 
for it by millions; it seems he is entitled 
to express derision without censure.

I ask myself what my teacher back then
would make of his conduct – would she think
of her officious admonishment,
how it might have been better saved up

and used in earnest a few decades later
against a man who is, for all practical purpose,
the heir of those she defended from the 
playful insult of a ten-year-old kid?