Charlotte’s Dog

Daniel the spaniel has ears like rugs,

Teeth like prongs of electric plugs.

His back’s a thundery winter sky,

Black clouds, white clouds rumbling by.

His nose is the rubber of an old squash ball

Bounced in the rain. His tail you’d call

A chopped-off rope with a motor inside

That keeps it walloping. Red-rimmed-eyed,

He whimpers like plimsolls on a wooden floor.

When he yawns he closes a crimson door.

When he barks it’s a shark of a sound that bites

Through frosty mornings and icy nights.

When he sleeps he wheezes on a dozing lung:

Then he wakes you too with a wash of his tongue!

Round

Many hounds are found about

Bounding round the roundabout,

In and out the roundabout

And round and round the roundabout,

And when a hound is found about

Bounding round the roundabout,

We impound that bounding hound

And ground him in the downtown pound,

Where you for round about a pound

May reclaim your bounding hound,

But if you leave him in the pound

We’ll hound him out of town!

Advice to Spiders

The spider is a very short person with very long legs

That are fine for advancing

On a fly in a sticky web

But utterly useless for dancing.

You can see two bees up

Over the sunny clover,

Body-popping,

But you can’t imagine two spiders having a knees-up

On their springy floor.

It’s those complicated legs that have stopped the bopping

For ever more.

They’d be so entangled

They’d get mangled,

So interrelated

They’d get amputated.

So I advise spiders:

Leave your dancing pumps on the shelf

And keep your legs to yourself.

Granny Tom

There’s a cat among the pigeons

In the yard, in the yard,

And it seems he isn’t trying

Very hard.

Should a pigeon chance to swoop,

You can see his whiskers droop

And his tail not twitch its loop

In the yard.

For the cat is growing old

In the yard, in the yard,

And the pigeons leave him cold.

He has starred

In his youth in many chases,

When he put them through their paces.

Now he knows just what his place is

In the yard.

He’s a snoozer in the sun

And his hunting days are done.

He’s a dozer by the wall

And he pounces not at all

For he knows he no more can. He

Might well be the pigeons’ granny

In the yard!

Mothering

Half-falling, half-flying, the young sparrow

Looped from the nest, and the cat

Leaped and snagged it out of the air,

Padded into the shade

With the bird warm in her mouth,

Ripped it apart and ate it,

Then lay on her side in the kitchen

Among the feathers,

Suckling each one

Of her innocent kittens, and purring.

The Cobra’s Crimbo

A cobra once at Christmastime

(His name was Jim or Jimbo)

Lay sleeping, coiled, beside his wife