.

Conjugation: Tense with Mood

—a verbal disagreement between the indicative
and the subjunctive

If I were all that I could be,
Perhaps I’d spend eternity
Cavorting in a field of lilies
With thoroughbred seductive fillies.

But I am just a common man,
Essentially no better than
A frog that’s never been a prince.
I shower and I always rinse

The residue of soap away
As if it were the perfect day
To take my place among the gentry
That heretofore have barred my entry

Into that posh patrician club
Above the fray—but here’s the rub:
In style and speech I tend to falter,
A plight good grammar cannot alter.

The worst of after-dinner speakers,
Decked out in T-shirt, shabby sneakers
And what might once have been blue denim,
I struggle to hold back my venom.

.

.

C.B. Anderson was the longtime gardener for the PBS television series, The Victory Garden.  Hundreds of his poems have appeared in scores of print and electronic journals out of North America, Great Britain, Ireland, Austria, Australia and India.  His collection, Mortal Soup and the Blue Yonder was published in 2013 by White Violet Press.

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4 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    If this were you, at least you write wonderful poems.

    Reply
  2. Joseph S. Salemi

    Kip, this is a pure delight. Perfect quatrains composed of perfect couplets!

    And you have used the subjunctive four times in this poem:

    1. If I were
    2. Perhaps I’d [I would] spend
    3. As if it were
    4. might once have been

    That’s twice in an if-clause, once in a future conditional, and once in a past contrafactual. You certainly know your subjunctives!

    Great rhymes: denim/venom, lillies/fillies, gentry-entry, and best of all that falter-alter. Perhaps you remember that old song with these lyrics:

    Don’t you falter at the altar —
    Your father didn’t falter, son — that’s why you’re here!

    Of course the song lyric uses the homophone /altar/ instead of /alter/, but in any case it’s tough to get a rhyme for “falter.” (At best we have halter, palter, and Walter.)

    Reply
  3. Margaret Coats

    Well done! And practically unique, as we have precious few poems on grammar. But as one reader with a strong interest, I’m greatly appreciative. May I call the oh, so suitable title a capstone to the conjugation? Now back to my psalter.

    Reply

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