Returning My Neighbor’s Saw*

“Would you jump from a perfectly good bridge,

just because your friends are?”

If the bridge is in Rome, my friends being Roman, I do what they do.

If the bridge is on the highway,

the majority of drivers plunging distractedly on,

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.

I keep up,

match pace,

go with the flow.

If I can’t beat them, I join them.

I don’t march to the beat of a different drummer;

I fall in with the rest of the troops.

I follow the leader.

I follow, or I get out of the way;

on a bridge, the result is the same.

If it were not my friends on the bridge, but my boss,

and my boss said “jump”

that’s what I’d do.

I never walk alone.

There’s safety in numbers;

It’s still a democracy, isn’t it?

If fifty one percent are in favor of bridge jumping,

as an upstanding citizen at home, not an assimilationist in Rome,

I cast my self in with the majority.

Keeping up with the Joneses

does a fine job of keeping our neighborhood white-washed

If it’s fashionable, up-to-the-minute,

I tend toward the trend, and tip myself over the cutting edge.

Would I jump from a perfectly good bridge,

just because my friends are?

I don’t want to make waves.

* saw (sô) n. A familiar saying, especially one that has become trite through repetition.