A Partial Bestiary
(For my niece, Allison)

Aardvark
The aardvark’s worthy of our praise
His name begins with a pair of a’s
He is clever, suave and svelte
The classiest creature on the veldt.

He loves to go and eat his fill
At a convenient termite hill
This is really no malarkey
He can’t help being aardvarky.

Butterfly

The butterfly’s a killer diller
He starts life as a caterpillar
But then he tires of that state
And decides that he’ll pupate.

Then he hatches and the guy
Becomes an adult butterfly
And the name for all this is
Complete metamorphosis.

Chimpanzee

The chimpanzee lives in a tree
He does not know astronomy
He is brave and he is bold
And clever as a five year old.

He wears a brightly hued bandanna
And eats a yellow ripe banana
If I could choose, I would not be
A creature like the chimpanzee.

Crocodile

Behold the friendly crocodile
He always greets you with a smil
But do not ask him for a ride
Or you may wind up inside.

If you meet him by a pool
Just apply the golden rule
Do not annoy him in his pride
Lest you end in his inside.

Giraffe

It’s very impolite to laugh
At the long neck of the giraffe
The reason why he is so tall
Need not then concern us at all.

He likes to eat the topmost branches
And read boring, cheap romances
And it’s interesting and true
He has a real stupendous view.

Gnu

A furry animal is the gnu
He does not look like me or you
For lions, he’s a tasty feast
And also called the wildebeest.

He always travels in a herd
To try to change him is absurd
It isn’t profitable, it’s true
To have a friend who is a gnu.

Hummingbird

The hummingbird came down the line
Of blossoms on the trumpet vine
Hummingbird, green one, I do find
Your flight a metaphor for the mind.

Pirhouetting, quick as a wink
As fast as the mind can think
Each migration do you go
Across the Gulf of Mexico.

Kangaroo

The kangaroo she is no slouch
She keeps her children in a pouch
The children aren’t very showy
And each of them is called a joey.

The kangaroo she likes to bound
And covers lots and lots of ground
She likes to go out to a ball
Like any good marsupial.

Ostrich

Look how the foolish ostrich stands
With its had beneath the sands
The reason why is hard to say
But he does it anyway.

The ostrich lies on desert plains
To be oblivious he feigns
But it would be quite absurd
To imitate this silly bird.

Owl

Behold the bird known as the owl
He loves to eat both fish or fowl
And does his hunting all the night
And he finds that quite all right.

The owl, they say, is very wise
And easy is to recognize
And the bird is nearly mute
Except when he will give a hoot.

Seal

A funny creature is the seal
It doesn’t have much sex appeal
It doesn’t wear expensive clothes
But balances a ball upon its nose.

The seals live in big colonies
Which practically obstruct the breeze
You ask what is their favorite dish
It is, you’re right, a plate of fish.

Spider

The spider’s a creature very great
The number of his legs is eight
He spins a web to catch his prey
And so he lives from day to day

When he has a fine web spun
He likes to bask beneath the sun
You won’t believe it till you’ve tried a
Friend as useful as a spider

Vulture

A lovely creature is the vulture
He is an advocate of culture
He likes it not if you ask why
He spends his days up in the sky.

The vulture dives upon the dead
Which is one way to get ahead
It would be better if he could sing
And get his meals at Burger King.

Whale
The whale’s the biggest one of all
His spout is like a waterfall
He does not use an escalator
And mostly lives near the equator.

To see a whale is quite a treat
He grows up to a hundred feet
He is not a rank landlubber
And people hunt him for his blubber.

Zebra

The zebra’s coat is black on white
Or white and black
Is he a sight!!

(Roger didn’t finish this one. He wrote “rest of poem to follow.”)

Before my window
Agreeably
There paused a green-skirted evergreen tree.So still she stands
Till I ponder what cause
To her flickering progress dictated pause (declared a pause).And distressed find
Each lower bough
Descending into a pool of snow.Snow ledging her eyebrows
Her frosty vision
Has charted the way from here with precision.

Trees walking are deliberate
More, say, than humankind
Our feet pace by to be in turn
Bypassed by mind.

Trees take one step, and are content
Having a single boot
To give the toe to the hands of the loam
And mildly turn ambition into root.

But don’t stay the little bands at night
Trooping, when nobody knows or cares
Over the warm undulations of the earth
Until the hills roll out in stars.

[If a tree should move
I suppose I’d miss it
But my faith in the prospect remains implicit.]

From their buds the roses pop
And the long day slinks
to an end
When will all this come to a stop
This road, this road without a bend.The curlew calls upon its nest
And I think of the girls I have known
Oh curlew, the one that I loved best
Comes to my mind fully blown.Cry then, for all past years blend
And the pains of living abate
Not mine to avert what the savage
years send
Though precisely what I await.
June 22, 2014

The cold, pale rays of sunlight,
Are shining in the dawn.
And the haze is slowly lifting,
From the trees upon the lawn.

The leaves, in all their glory,
Put on their cloaks of gold,
And scatter o’er the wood lands,
As the autumn wind blows cold.

The dark brown nuts are dropping
Like a hail upon the ground,
And the lively little squirrel
Is scurrying around.

The bear, grown fat by summer
Ambled o’er the hill,
Through sparkling woodland waters
Into the forest still.
Roger Fogelman—7th grade

From their buds the roses pop
And the long day slinks
to an end
When will all this come to a stop
This road, this road without a bend.

The curlew calls upon its nest
And I think of the girls I have known
Oh curlew, the one that I loved best
Comes to my mind fully blown.

Cry then, for all past years blend
And the pains of living abate
Not mine to avert what the savage
years send
Though precisely what I await.
June 22, 2014

I do not write words but metaphors
Which are akin to God
And new minted things
Which fly like sparks from an anvil
And are coins to buy a seat in the world to come
And so with trepidation
They weld earth and sky
And I, a minor poet,
Wish to indicate
That poetry is shorthand
Both intellectual and emotional
And on that note I end my poem.

It is very honorable to love a woman
In the spring, at midday, in the shade
Of the very long ago, which is only human,
And the weeping willow glade
Very possibly is Eden
In the middle of which transacted a trade
Which reminds us that, when the world began
Woman was contained in the side of man.
To be a snake is not very honorable
And yet he was the go-between.
And all of us, or those who are able
To see the truth instead of the fable,
At the center of it, or whatever I mean,
Has some part of him snake, liable
To tempt and be cursed, and crawl, having done,
Responsible for every mother’s son.

So love, why not, it is a very serious business,
And supports commerce, industry, wars,
Poetry, women, I am told, somewhat less
Than honorable, and leaves not scars
Which can’t be healed by the next generation, or mars
Anyone’s beauty sleep, permanently, and the princess
In the story awoke, and was alive. Now let the song,
Its singer, return to their beginning, end, where they belong.
This poem is reprinted from The Academy of American Poets, University and College Poetry Prizes, 1960-1966