Raspberry sherbet

 

When you're hot and weary from work or play

In the blaze of a blistering summer's day,

There's nothing that quite serves survival

Like a raspberry sherbet revival.

One scoop with a sugar cone under

Is polar Promethean plunder.

It's as though your whole life was a fast!

Mouth and soul are wed at last

And it's a marriage made in heaven.

Now love and strife stand even—

Or have you too greatly enjoyed

Without a trace of the cross and nails

The fruits of the earth so well employed

You've tipped the celestial scales?

 

For the gods are doing the math, you're not.

And raspberry sherbet—raspberry sherbet:

Raspberry sherbet counts for a lot.

 

If love equals strife and pain equals pleasure,

If joy cancels grief, and measure for measure,

You may ask how we're paying for this,

All this raspberry-sherbet bliss.

Though I'd hardly pass for omniscient,

Your brain freeze cannot be sufficient.

The medieval doctors of the Church

Conducted much research

In this math of compensations—

With suspect operations.

I don't think we yet know the sum

Of all sherbet has underwritten.

Both Albert and Isaac were mum.

What M Theory says—ask Witten.

 

Though the gods are doing this math, he's not.

And surely a sherbet—at least one sherbet:

Raspberry sherbet counts for a lot.

 

The first picked blueberry's burst on the palate.

A windfall of pecans freed by the mallet.

Cornbread, honey and strawberry jam.

A still summer lake that must be swam.

When the wood thrush is fluting above,

Who's keeping the books, my love?

The accounting, I think, would surprise us;

And the gods who give and apprise us

I think we surprise even more.

Love, let us live rich living poor.

And the balance in stars overhead:

In goodwill, let's live to disturb it.

Let us finish our lives in the red—

Or the pink of raspberry sherbet.

 

Yes, the gods are doing the math, we're not.

And raspberry sherbet—raspberry sherbet:

Raspberry sherbet counts for a lot.