The Reporter by Michael Ceraolo

Here is the second poem in the sequence Excuse My Dust, poems in the persona of Wallace Reid.

The Reporter

I originally wanted to become a surgeon,

while Mother wanted me to be a man of letters;

after I started Princeton I would decide

When at home during a break from prep school

I appeared in a local play for fun

Mother and Dad panicked and decided

to heed Greeley's advice, and sent me west

I worked a number of jobs while out there:

hotel clerk, ranch hand, laborer,

coming back east when told Mother was seriously ill

She wasn't, but the ruse had worked

Now that I was back home I needed a job,

college no longer appealing to me,

so I got a job as a reporter