The Secret Word

Here's the latest of my poems. Old heads who went to Catholic schools with the good sisters will find familiar echoes. In fact, one of my poet friends, remarked that the poem is nostalgic. And indeed, it is, so I wonder just how much sense it will make to people to don't know who "Grocho" is--although that's hard to imagine--and to whom the idea of a black-and-white TV show conjures up images of ancient history such as paintings on the walls of caves. Ah, well! Here is is for those who can dig it.

The Secret Word

No computer-conjured marvels

in those black-and-white quiz show days.

Just a stuffed duck, word placard

in his beak dropped on a cord

from a beam above.

“Say the secret word and divide $100”—

Groucho’s standard line to the pair

of just plain ole American contestants,

one guy, one gal—always,

playing “You Bet Your Life.”

They didn’t, of course, risk much of anything

save their dignity,

and only occasionally did they say

the secret noun or common verb.

I mean, how often does “oven” or “crank”

or “silk” or even “word” come up in

ordinary conversation, even

with a magnificently mustachioed

funny guy in a bow tie

and a line of banter as long as the queue

circling the block to cram the tiny studio?

Fifty bucks went a long way in the Fifties.

The very decade of my elementary school years

at St. Rose de Lima and St. Francis Cabrini—

both bastions of Crescent City Catholicism

patrolled by hooded gospel guardians,

silent as sidewinders and twice as mean,

Amazons astride our daily universe, enforcing

God’s relentless law with habitual rigor.

One can only imagine what gimp-curdling,

rosary-wringing mayhem would have visited us

had they ever heard our secret sixth-grade word.

For all of us a just-learned noun, adjective, verb,

succinct and wickedly versatile. Four letters,

and it rhymed with “duck.”