This poem is a version of the story of the little Dutch boy who saved his country from being flooded by plugging a hole in a dike with one finger.
Much of life
is Dutch
one-digit
operations
in which
legions of
big robust
people crouch
behind
badly cracked
dike systems
attached
by the thumbs
their wide
balloon-pantsed rumps
up-ended to the
northern sun
while, back
in town, little
black-suspendered
tulip magnates
stride around.
from Say Uncle, 2000
Grove Press, New York, NY
