All hail the new President, Joe Biden has become number forty six!

And the cycle continues – the American four year itch.

Be careful what you wish for, Joe, you’ve inherited a mess

After a disastrous term of confusion, ranting and largesse.

For the previous leader of the free world has been too distracted of late

Focussing on himself, his isms, focussing on his trials and his fate.

Leadership has been in absentia, so you’ll have to strive with utmost zeal

To restore the reputation of the Oval Office and the Presidential Seal.

The United States has always prided itself on promoting democracy

The prime enemy of dictators, of communism and theocracy

Yet the last few years have witnessed a woeful and shambolic hypocrisy

As an exhausted world has watched, agog, at a despotic autocracy.

The US voting system, has some responsibility, it has confounded and confused

With caucuses and electoral colleges, dimpled chads bemused

Misinformation reigned and Trump’s antagonistic bile

He poured petrol on the flames in his vitriolic style.

President Biden has lots to do – a weighty list to fix

Covid, gun crime, race relations, far right politics.

Nuclear treaties scuppered, broken promises, damaged foreign relations

China soon to overtake the US as the top economic nation.

Russian hacking, teenage hacking, Control-Alt-Delete

A never-ending flow of geeks for the CIA’s cybersecurity experts to defeat.

Obesity (but, D’oh!, please don’t fat shame), the mess of US healthcare

Ongoing environmental disaster, there’s an agenda of despair.

However, all is not lost, there are reasons to be cheerful

The United States is ebullient, the antithesis of fearful.

An entrepreneurial can-do attitude where no-nonsense breeds success

It is a melting pot for ideas and for creativity to impress.

They have mountains, coasts and prairies and infrastructure for survival

A land of plenty, a people of drive and a commerciality unrivalled.

So maybe the best for the globe’s strongest nation is yet to be unfurled

As Biden seeks to heal a divided America and, thus, to heal the world.