Large Fierce Mammal

Ladies and Gentlemen — the Queen (Source: CBC News)

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is the head of state for Commonwealth nations, including Canada, and now at 90, well past the finish line in the race for longest lived and still reigning British monarch (Queen Victoria died at 81). Now, at the end of this year of death and dishevelment, there is something that hasn’t escaped my notice I will waste no time bringing to yours — the Queen has a cold. A “heavy” cold no less, as described by Buckingham Palace, and so much so that it prevented her from attending the traditional Christmas day church service.

Her husband, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, is suffering likewise but was able to represent the royal couple by attending the service for both of them, and of him it was said that he, “… was driven to church in Sandringham on Sunday and walked in unaided.” A thing that doesn’t surprise me in the least because I happen to know a number of Canadian military officers who have been present when the Duke has paid a Royal visit to their base officer’s mess, and each of them have expressed their admiration that he was able to walk out of the mess unaided. But I digress.

This poem was inspired both by the past year’s voracity for human flesh, and Her Majesty’s cold in the face of it. Happy new year.

Ode to Twenty Sixteen

By LFM

For twelve straight months this dying year
Left corpses in its wake,
A shockingly macabre who’s who,
Of notables to take.

Perhaps it lost its joie de vivre,
Or maybe lost its gall,
We know it missed one winning shot
And really dropped the ball.

The Queen’s lived four score years and ten
Upon this earth of ours,
So romance doesn’t come to mind
As cause for sending flowers.

But even at her tender age
Whilst death was being doled,
When twenty sixteen looked her way,
It gave her but a cold.