Daniel Galef

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Ancient Roman Holiday

For my summer vacation I went to Ancient Rome.

It wasn’t very much like home.

It was easy to find, because all roads lead there,

But what if they don’t have everything you need there?

Or suppose you have to get from Hotzeplotz, Outer Mongolia to the icy outskirts of Nome

But no matter what road you take they all lead to Rome.

Once we got there (Rome, that is, not Alaska) then of course we had to start doing as do the Romans

Which meant wearing togas instead of blue jeans and looking up at the sky watching birds fly and trying to see omens

And failing

And all the time shouting “Hail, Caesar!” even when Caesar isn’t there and it’s not hailing.

All in all, it was a pretty good vacation, although not the best I’ve ever seen;

But I still think it was a waste of that time machine.

Daniel Galef has been lauded as the Arthur Shakespeare of his generation by none other than the New York Review of Books, but also not by them, either. His poems for children have been published in Caterpillar, the Balloons Lit. Journal, Spaceports & Spidersilk, and Snakeskin.