Once Upon A Time In Hollywood Poem by Gayathri Seetharam

Once upon a time in Hollywood
-Gayathri B. Seetharam
I baked Welsh bread and made a Welsh rabbit
From lettuce and onions with a raisin for an eye
The bread was sweet and panoramic and tasty
For it gave me an insight into the British Isles;

I, after some effort, unearthed a piece of writing
About the Welsh countryside from Philip Boast's Watersmeet
And I shall include a few excerpts:
Watersmeet hung breathless in the brilliant glare -
Where Shelley and Wordworth had written poetry,
A green shimmer of hanging woods tumbled sheer
From the red rocks into a haze of wild flowers -
Beyond the dense green cleft of Watersmeet
Curving down towards the jagged hogsback coastline,
The Severn Sea stretched far out to the white cliffs of Wales;

Equally beautiful descriptions of London, Cornwall and Yorkshire
Are the likeable feature of many British books
And Robert Louis Stevenson set most of his books in Scotland
Nora Roberts begins her book, Born In Ice, with a loving description
Of Ireland as a foreword and says that the rolling green fields under heavy skies
And the criss-crossing gray of stone fences
And the majestic tumble of a ruined castle
Most likely sacked by those damned Cromwellians
Ah! The Irish with their short tempers
Are lovable like the English, Welsh and the Scottish;

If Hollywood has portrayed the various peoples
With a wide gamut of themes
As skillfully as Quentin Tarantino has
The American story from various angles,
It is for the candidates in the impending Canadian election
To address key issues like the secure future of the Canadian people
And the continued growth of the economy,
Improved health care with a drug plan
And more funding for scientific, engineering and medical research
And reasonably reduced taxes for remember, folks, it is taxes
Which ensures growth of the country's infrastructure;

If love, as John Steinbeck has said in Tortilla Flat
Has the power to "sing in one's head
Roar through one's body like a freshet
And shake one like a tropical storm shakes a forest of palms"
My political love and admiration for PM Justin Trudeau
Has the power to make me weak knee"ed",
Starry eyed and critically acclaiming.