Strategic Withdrawal

An honest man in every other way
couldn’t be trusted at Monopoly.
He always used a simple strategy:
distract and cheat. He never seemed to pay
‘get out of jail’. Passed GO too frequently,
collecting two hundred pounds. The railway
cards always belonged to him. Your money
dwindled and yet you couldn’t really say
how he’d swindled you, nor how he’d come by
Mayfair, two hotels. He thought it funny,
laughed, grinned, gloated until one fateful day
we all decided as a family
to call his bluff, and we refused to play.
How’s about a game of Monopoly?
he’d plead. I promise I won’t cheat, he’d say.
But he had taught us our own strategy.

(for Hubert)