Tag Archives: poems about animals

Wild Nights

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Click on Photos to Enlarge.

2001-2022

Wild Nights 

I’m caught up in my surreal dream,
irrational as it might seem,
of tabby cats and wolverines
in leather jackets and distressed jeans,
their animal natures left behind
for culture of a human kind.

Armadillos playing squash,
then coming over for a nosh.
Butterflies on roller skates
hobnobbing with potentates,
wings integral in lifting up
to table level as they sup.

Kangaroos keep up the beat
by drumming with their paws and feet.
Cicadas sound their castanets,
summoning their sobriquets*
as rain joins in with steady drumming,
to accompany their humming.

Varied species get along:
wolf and canary join in song,
the party only breaking up
when I’m awakened by my pup
and the pets of my imagination
succumb once more to sublimation.

2022

*In Mexico, cicadas are nicknamed “Rainbirds” because their noisy clatter announces the imminent arrival of the rainy season.

Prompt words today are: culture, squash, surreal,integral, wolf, tabby cat and irrational. Photos of cat, butterfly, cicada and Zoe biting my ear are all by me. The rest are thanks to Unsplash.

Culinary Taboos

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Culinary Taboos

Hot dogs, tacos, ham on rye
are the ways that I get by.
I don’t like caviar on toast,
and what I really hate the most
are liver, tripe or heart or brains.
These are the things my taste disdains.
I cannot masticate and eat
These things that, think, digest or beat.
The height of what my mouth deplores,
they’re  what my stomach most deplores.
And it has never been my habit
to eat lamb or veal or rabbit,
possibly because it gets
me thinking about former pets
and liaisons with baby creatures
that were very frequent features
in a childhood wherein we
sheltered a menagerie
of magpies, bunnies, kittens, rabbits
that fulfilled my parents’ habits
to collect those orphaned things
that often life presents and brings
to those who notice what is needed
by those abandoned or defeated..
Zippy, Fluffy, Tiger, Poo
were the names of just a few
babies that became our peers
within our formative years,
which is  why I still dispute
eating things so young and cute.
But reasons that I do not eat
any fish or organ meat? 
The answer is succinct and easy.
They just simply make me queazy!

True story? Yes, we really did have a baby raccoon named Zippy and all of these other orphaned animals brought home from the ranch by my father and raised like her own kids by my mother.
And yes, this poem rambles a bit, but for Pete’s sake, look at the prompt words!! Not complaining, just explaining….And that is Zippy up there as an illustration not of a possible cuisine choice, but he was one of our orphaned animal adoptees.

Prompts today are zippy, possible, rye, liaison, height and shelter.

Infestation

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Infestation

When she screams like a banshee, running through the house,
just because she saw a tiny little mouse,
the mouse bilks all her efforts to thus scare it away
by slipping in the closet where in time it may
produce many other creatures of its ilk
in a tiny nest it has established in the silk
contents of her drawer of sexy lingerie—
picking for its bed her favorite negligee.

So, if she’s so lucky as to score a kiss
and, planning for a night of amatory bliss,
she reaches in her drawer, completely unaware
of the little visitors housed in her underwear,
no doubt she’ll find reminders of that earlier day
and the previous companion she thought she’d chased away.
Then her latest conquest will beat a fast retreat
as her former screams she ventures to repeat.

 

 

Word prompts today are banshee, reminder, bliss, bilk and house. Illustration thanks to Frenjamin Benklin on Unsplash.

 

Extended Family

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Extended Family

My furry raider sloshed through rain
out to the barn and back again,
but next trip was a passenger
his human cuddled close to her
so both could view the transient
new mother so intently bent
over her bounty, newly born
this blustery, rainy, wind-swept morn.

One more thing born that rainy day
around three homeless ones that lay
snuggled down within the hay
protected from the weather’s fray—
a sense of family between
an old male cat, once feral, mean—
who had been taken in himself
and these three waifs, curled on a shelf
within that barn where I’d found him.
Now both of us discovered them
and that day welcomed them, all three
to our extended family.

Prompt words today are raider,  slosh, transient, bounty, and passenger.

Hunters and Gatherers

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Hunters and Gatherers

Each animal survives because of some unique ability.
The chipmunk gets along in life because of its nimbility.
It scampers over rocks and logs with speed and grace and pluck
to grab up errant picnic crumbs (on days when it’s in luck.)

Lions live by tooth and claw and speed to hunt their prey.
Cows just use their molars to masticate their hay.
Incisors furnish beavers with foliage and bark.
Raccoons have larger eyes than us for hunting in the dark.

If food in lofty places is what monkeys desire,
they can use prehensile thumbs to journey ever higher,
but an elephant’s long trunk can help him reach what he may please
obviating his necessity to climb up trees.

Humans , however, do not need  trunks or speed or climbing.
They do not need agility or viciousness or timing.
They have no need to wait in hiding by some water hole.
They simply use their money to buy  filet of sole!

 

Today’s prompt words are nimble, obviate, desire and money. Here are the links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/04/29/rdp-monday-nimble/
FOWC with Fandango — Obviate
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/04/29/your-daily-word-prompt-desire-april-29-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/04/29/money/

Family Roster

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Family Roster

I wonder, did you ever know
that the mighty buffalo
and the bison (but not the sow)
are qualified to join the cow
as animals that we opine
should be listed as bovine?

Goats and sheep are also cast
as Bovindae, as is the last
animal in this family,
which is the oxen. So you see
all the animals the cow
shares its family name with now!

 

The prompt word, of course, was bovine!
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/03/06/bovine/

Happy Ending

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bee at beach

Happy Ending

It’s typical and just my luck
that when the fruit fell from the truck,
I didn’t adequately duck,
and so was splattered with its muck.
My hungry hens began to cluck.
The honey bees began to suck.
They made a meal of former yuck!

https://dversepoets.com/quadrille/yuck

“Ant”cestry.Com

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“Ant”cestry.Com

“I think we may be family,” was whispered in his ear,
but he couldn’t see who said it, though he looked both far and near.
Again that small voice spoke to him. “We share a family name,
although as the biggest, you possess most of the fame.”

Thus did the massive elephant notice for the first time
the tiniest of animals who’d finished its long climb
from the dirt so far below up to his mighty ear.
From foot to knee to shoulder, it had climbed in spite of fear

that one great flinch might cast it from the air down to the ground.
Yet still it journeyed upwards, driven to expound
on how great an irony, surely it must be,
that this small “ant” and the eleph”ant” must be family!

NaPoWriMo 2018, Day 9: write a poem in which something big and something small come together.

How Not to Walk a Crocodile

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How Not to Walk a Crocodile

I’ll admit, it’s been a while
since I walked a crocodile,
so my technique is rather rusty
and my memory is dusty.
Still, I’ll tell you if you sit awhile
how not to walk a crocodile!

Don’t walk him through the butcher shop.
The butcher will just call a cop.
Don’t visit bakeries at all.
His roar will cause the cakes to fall.
That store where Mother bought her dress?
No place to walk your croc, I’d guess.

And though your pet may need some air,
it’s best that you don’t take him where
small dogs are left out for our viewing
just right for crocodile chewing.
Dog parks do not work for crocs
Find a new place for your walks.

Don’t walk him on your grandma’s floor.
She’ll sweep you both right out the door.
Don’t take him to your Sunday School.
He’s sure to break the Golden Rule.
And if you take him to the deli,
no saying what ends in his belly.

I’ll share a secret with you now.
It is, I really don’t know how
to take a crocodile for a walk.
All of this has just been talk.
And can I guess by your big smile,
you do not have a crocodile?

I guess it was the recent sighting of a croc on the beach at night that sent this little ditty rushing into my head this morning. I would love to have someone illustrate this.  Anyone want to try? Send a sketch of your vision of the croc in one of the given situations. You can either email it to me or put it on your blog and send me a link!
Here’s a photo of the croc that was on the beach near the house I rent. You could see my house in the background if it were light! Photo by Susana Vijaya. (She estimated the croc to be 3 meters long!)

Update: If you’re not ready to leave croc world yet, here’s an oldie but goodie. (Thanks to Marilyn for the memory jog.)

Not to Taste

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We spend so much of our time choosing, discussing, cooking or devouring food that we consider to be flavorful, but rarely do we consider just how flavorful we ourselves may be.

Not to Taste

I have no taste for seafood—neither sea bass nor crustacean.
My friends’ attempts to feed them to me end in their frustration.
I cannot stand the taste of them—their odor nor their texture.
I’ve heard that they are good for me, so please spare me the lecture!

When I was in New Orleans, they tried to feed me gator.
I politely turned it down and had a burger later.
For though a gator’s not a fish, and that’s something I know,
they must be family somehow, ‘cause both live in H2O!

Sometimes I go out birding up a river by the sea.
The grandson of the captain comes along to talk to me.
The river’s full of crocodiles, and birds overhead
fly in by the thousands to seek their evening bed.

They rest so gently in the trees that I forget the threat
of all those crocs there down below, lurking in the wet.
Most of the year the estuary’s cut off from the sea,
but this year there was one big rain that set the river free.

When I was swimming Saturday, beyond the surf, just me,
I saw some people looking at—whatever could it be?
I just went on exercising in the surf and sand.
The sun went down but I stayed out. The water was just grand.

But when I finally came to land, folks there on the beach
told me that a croc passed by, well beyond my reach.
And since I, too, was out there as handy as could be,
I sure am glad that crocodile had no taste for me!!!!

Today’s prompt word is flavorful. This poem found in my archives was written so long ago that I had forgotten it.  Hopefully, you have, too. The beautiful photo of ceviche was snapped in La Manzanilla, as was the photo of the croc. The event described in the poem was true, by the way. Since then I’ve instructed friends to call me in out of the water no matter how far away the croc is!