Trying to Keep the “ick” out of Limerick

Next Wednesday is St. Patrick’s Day, This fourth-century British missionary to Ireland is a favorite to many. His feast day, March 17th tends to turn us all Irish. Today I am going light, in anticipation of the fun we might have on St. Patty’s Day next week.  A playful form of poetry is one of my favorites. I am speaking about the limerick. It is associated with Ireland because of the Irish city and county of Limerick but the popular info-source Wikipedia puts its origins in eighteenth-century England. The limericks I write do not meet the usual requirement. Gershon Legman, who amassed a huge scholarly anthology of them, insists the true limerick as a folk form is always obscene. Arnold Bennet and George Bernard Shaw agree. (Eh, what do they know?)

I lean on the poetic license to go where I please with them. I am not compelled to follow limerick’s transgressive conventions and its tendency toward violating a taboo. I will say, however, I found this anonymous limerick’s jab amusing: The limerick packs laughs anatomical | Into space that is quite economical | but the good ones I’ve seen | So seldom are clean |  And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

Be that as it may, sacrificing humor is not the worst thing we can do. I shine a light here on several of our brilliant St. Francis professional staff:

Father Wismer, or Bob, if you please,
has skills at which one cannot sneeze.
Story-teller with flair,
preacher extraordinaire,
his message brings us to our knees.

Sally Jo, our Admin Assistant
bringing order, she is quite persistent.
She keeps us on course,
to contend with, a force,
always pleasant, and drama resistant.

Hooray! Mrs. Devlin the great!
And here, we emphatically state,
she deserves every praise
that our truthful hearts raise,
We’ve no need to exaggerate.

No maestro can top our Rick Keith
he’s up there, all else are beneath
Humble and unassuming:
though ratings are booming.
Fit him for a grand laurel wreath.

High qualities that never end.
Us, to heav’n, his messages send—
Belov’d Father Bates:
there is no one who rates
above him, our pastor and friend.

It is easier to write for others than to put one’s self into verse. But to get it over with, I came up with this:

Please, make Fr. David aware
some have fertile minds: gems to spare.
Then some, as it were,
just fertilizer,
these, should only sparingly share.

So with that, I better share no more for now. Blessings to you all on this beautiful Friday in Lent. Tomorrow we can return to our scripture-centered ilk of reflection…maybe.