It may be just a slip of the tongue

Or an off the cuff remark,

A momentary ego clash

Or an untimely eruption of ethnic rivalry

Despite being armed to the hilt

With proverbial advices such as

Mind your words, look before you leap,

Forget and forgive and so on.

You fail to use these arms

And let things slip out of your hands.

Everything will fizzle out soon

If you are ordinary folks

But not so when one of you is a Harvard scholar

And the other a police sergeant.

It spreads like wild fire

Soon the television crew is at your gates

The whole world watches you

And if the color of your skin differs

Then it assumes racial tone

Even Obama’s casual utterance takes a new turn

 

The ego clash between Mr. Gates and the police officer

Would’ve snowballed into a major crisis

Hadn’t Mr. Obama interfered.

But Obama being Obama

What followed was not a serious official talk

A friendly chat. A beer summit.

And to quote a reporter, “they came, they met,

They drank, they did not apologize

They just agreed to disagree”

The beer summit and the Obama magic

Worked well and we folks can sing,

“All is well that ends well”.