Notes of an Unnaturalist

MAN has an oversoul,
But not the mole.
What the mole has isn’t clear:
But it’s an undersoul, I fear.

THE water strider deserves mention
For his uplifting invention —
Something to do with surface tension.
Man aestivates
While Gerri skates.
Mistake a lake for a lawn,
And man is gone:
Let the water freeze,
And he’s.

UNLIKE the Gerridae
The Ephemeridae
Greatly prefer mating
To skating.

MY hand turns over the stone
And there lies the slug alone,
Pale as the darkness made him.
I shall not grade or degrade him.

THE inchworm
Doesn’t squirm,
Nor is that comic actor
A caterpillar tractor,
He gives himself a hunch
To move his prolegs in a bunch.
Whatever the route,
His epilogs follow suit;
And while he plays his hunches
He lunches.

MAN is not partial to the skunk
And in his presence has no spunk.
At night wilhin a Buick’s beam
Skunks die, yet people do not seem
Delighted when their dry-cell torch
Defines one underneath the porch.
But si III of all our fauna he,
The skunk, shows sempiternal glee.
You catch him, when the moon is round,
At play upon the silver ground
The merriest of little grigs.
And merry even when he digs
For grubs. Why one of such good heart
Is in bad odor from the start
Is more than I’m prepared to say.
Perhaps we’d love him in a way
If his performance glad and gay
Were given as a matinee.

A BOG
Is where you find the leopard frog:
The boggier, polliwoggier,
And wetter, the better.
On a log be is bumpy
And jumpy:
Not so
Down below.
Delicately peppered
Like a leopard,
He has lots and lots
Of spots.
He can change one and does:
The one where he was.