The More or Less Peaceable Kingdom

by Pipi van Firkhall, dds

          I

Posies are red, violence are blue. I am not a sheep. Are you?
I’m a moose and you’re a goose. We are in the ballet russe,
Where we dance upon the lawn The après-midi of a fawn.
Stanley here’s a coral snake. Spends his time beneath the lake.
We’ve asked him not to hunt or kill The passers-by. But Stanley will.
“And dust shall be the serpent’s meat.”1 Not what Stanley likes to eat.
Elmer is a buffalo, Strong and silent. Rather slow,
But stolid on the endless plain When snow drifts down, and sleet, and rain.
Microbes all are Joe and Fred And Susan, Harry, Max and Ted,
They live inside a drop of jam With Eloise, and Pat, and Sam.
Louise and Neil, the trilobites. Went frolicking on moonlit nights.
They were romantically linked. But then their species went extinct.
Over there’s the warthog, Nate. We always tell him he looks great!
Franklin Delano, the zebra Said his prayers in perfect Hebra.
A lion got him anyway. How bothersome to be the prey.

          II

But being hunted down and such Just doesn’t happen all that much.
We have a Peaceful Kingdom here. The leopards hang out with the deer.
Though bats and lizards eat mosquitoes, Chimpanzees prefer their Fritos.
And cheerful monkeys gaily scoot Among the trees, and fight for fruit.
The primates form a corps d’élite. They hang from branches by their feet.
Shirley is an otter shrew, But wants to be a primate too.
Primates are so much in vogue That otter shrews are going rogue.
Everyone’s a primate fan, But no one wants to be a man.
They smoke. They play the drums and scream. They throw their trash into the stream.
They let their smelly motors run. They kill our comrades just for fun.
We don’t let the humans in. They stink our forest up with sin.
So in among the bears and pandas, There’s just one human (Bernie Sanders).

October 2016

  1. Isaiah 65:25.
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