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This poem is a version of the story of the little Dutch boy who saved his country from being flooded by plugging a hole in a dike with one finger.

Dutch

Kay Ryan

Much of life
is Dutch
one-digit
operations

in which
legions of
big robust
people crouch

behind
badly cracked
dike systems

attached
by the thumbs

their wide
balloon-pantsed rumps
up-ended to the
northern sun

while, back
in town, little
black-suspendered
tulip magnates
stride around.

from Say Uncle, 2000
Grove Press, New York, NY