Notes About The Poem
11/11/2025 for Time Travelor Poetry Contest sponsored by Tom Woody
Mission: Braunau am Inn, Austria 1879
“It is too late to shut the stable door when the steed is stolen.”
~ From John Heywood’s A Dialogue Containing the Number in Effect of All the Proverbs in the English Tongue (1546)
“When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water.”
~ From Ben Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac (1746)
My mission is to go back to eighteen-seventy-nine.
I’ve been authorized to repair history’s design.
Luckily, I’ve been trained on a Woody’s Time Machine,
and granted poetic license, fate to intervene.
I’ve set the dial to Braunau am Inn, near the border
of Bavaria and Austria. I must prevent disorder.
I’ll play with history’s chessboard, move a couple pawns,
and introduce Klara Polzl to a man named Franz.
Franz needed a housekeeper, and Klara fit the bill.
So, until pigs fly, which they never did and never will,
Klara wouldn’t work for Alois. They’d not have a son,
and the world would be spared what their young Adolf had done.
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