Editor’s Note: Dr. Raymond F. Comeau, a Haverhill native and poet, observes the holiday season offers greater potential for con artists.
In his latest poem, “Ensnared by a Con,” Comeau doesn’t specifically define the criminal, leaving to readers and listeners to paint within their own minds a picture of the con—whether the common thief or perhaps one cloaked in religious, business or political trappings.
The cautionary tale notes how modern tech plays enabling roles, but suggests naiveté is an essential ingredient in the dishonest act’s success. It has always been rooted in deception or even unchallenged exaggeration as seen in German writer Rudolf Erich Raspe’s comical works of war successes by the fictional Baron von Münchhausen.
Now of Belmont, Comeau is a retired dean and current lecturer at Harvard University Extension School. He is also a trustee, emeritus, of the John Greenleaf Whittier Birthplace in Haverhill.
Ensnared By a Con
Wily and they are here
(Holiday season is meat)
On the internet
In person on the phone
And in this fabulous tale
A colossus stands up
Ignoring his sopping-wet suit
All is stable
All is good he solemnly states
Face upward splendid with God
While around him in raging water
A flood is having its way
Democracy clings
To a mattress by a thread
Tangled in mudflats freedom is lost
And justice poor justice
Waterlogged barely floats
Even reason and time go wild
Bobbing and swirling
Like an infant’s rubber duck
Who am I
Who are you
Where are we
Followers wonder (wouldn’t you)
But all is stable
All is good they believe
© Raymond Comeau August 2025