If I Were in Charge of the World

(Apologies to Judith Viorst)
If I were in charge of the world
My favorite flip-flops would never wear out.
There would be no books of poems with the
last page missing,
No hairy spiders to hide in the corners.
If I were in charge of the world
I would have a never-ending string of puddles
to jump in,
And mothers would never scold their children
for tracking mud halfway down the hall.
If I were in charge of the world
There would never be hungry but always satisfied,
Except in the classroom, where
There would be endless shelves of books to feed
voracious minds.
I would find a way to make it easier
For everyone to understand that sometimes the same
stars can make
multiple constellations,
And that Archimedes was right:
You can move the world if only you have a lever and
a place to stand.