THE BAT
By day the bat is cousin to the mouse.
He likes the attic of an aging house.
His fingers make a hat about his head.
His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead.
He loops in crazy figures half the night
Among the trees that face the corner light.
But when he brushes up against a screen,
We are afraid of what our eyes have seen:
For something is amiss or out of place
When mice with wings can wear a human face.
By Theodore Roethke
THE PANTHER
The panther is like a leopard,
Except it hasn't been peppered.
Should you behold a panther crouch,
Prepare to say ouch.
Better yet, if called by a panter,
Don't anther.
By Ogden Nash
THE HIPPOPOTOMUS
Behold the hippopotomus!
We laugh at how he looks to us,
And yet in moments dank and grim
I wonder how we look to him.
Peace, Peace, thou hippopotomus!
We really look all right to us,
As you no doubt delight the eye
Of other hippopotami.
By Odgen Nash
LEOPARD
Eons ago, when the earth was still yeasty,
The leopard, my love, was an unspotted beastly,
Unsullied as sunlight, not one spot or two spots.
Alas! He was snared for simmering stew pots!
But too many cooks shaking shakers of spices
Created a much needed moment of crisis.
He leaped for his life while the cooks were kerchooing
And fled, all the fleet-footed natives persuing.
He escaped! But his fur was still salted and peppered,
And that's how there came to be spots on the leopard.
By Gretchen Kreps
SOMETHING TOLD THE WILD GEESE
Something told the wild geese
It was time to go.
Though the fields lay golden
Something whispered-"Snow"
Leaves were green and stirring,
Berries, luster-glossed,
But beneath warm feathers,
Something cautioned-"Frost"
All the sagging orchards
Steamed with amber spice,
But each wild breast stiffened
At remembered ice.
Something told the wild geese
It was time to fly-
Summer sun was on their wings,
Winter in their cry.
By Rachel Field
THE BAT
Being a mammal, I have less care than birds,
Being a flight-borne creature, need no home,
So while the beaver builds its, robin its nest,
I hook my hind feet into a wall or ceiling
And hang there looking at the world made silly
By being turned around and upside-down.
Sleep, sleep is my nourishment, I sleep
All day, all winter, and my young's but one.
At first I fly with it at my breast, even hunting,
But if it bores me I hang it on a wall
And go alone, enjoying insects frankly.
Tons, tons, I devour tons of insects, half
Of my weight is insects eaten within one night,
Yet cleverer than the swift or swallow, I deploy
Twist, turn, dodge, catch mosquitoes one by one.
And if the human family finds me odd,
No older they, lock in their crazy yards.
By Ruth Herschberger
THE EAGLE
He clasps the crag with his crooked hands,
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the asure world he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath his crawls,
He watched from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt, he falls.
By Alfred Lord Tennyson
SONG OF THE ROAD
Man created cars, then bid
Them multiply, and that they did.
Now winding superhighways lead
Our super-cars to super-speeds.
And while our concrete glaciers grow,
Where will the little creatures go?
A small raccoon darts out, but dies
Beside the roadside, where he lies.
Dogs and cats and foxes soon
End up just like that poor raccoon.
Perhaps these simple little scenes
Show best what Highway Robbery means.
-Unknown
SUPRISE
Why do they cuddle me that way?
Why do they always want to play?
They made me a fluffy bed. What for?
I'd rather sleep on a concrete floor.
They buy me toys-a sweater-a bone-
I quite prefer being left alone.
They feed me steak-but I like gruel.
Do you believe me? April Fool!
-Unknown
THE SPIDER
With six small diamonds for his eyes
He walks upon the Summer skies,
Drawing from his silken blouse
The lacework of his dwelling house.
He lays his staircase as he goes
Under his eight thoughtful toes
And grows with the concentric flower
Of his shadowless, thin bower.
His back legs are a pair of hands,
They can spindle out the strands
Of a thread that is so small
It stops the sunlight not at all.
He spins himself to threads of dew
Which will harden soon into
Lines that cut like slender knives
Across the insects' airy lives.
He makes no motion but is right,
He spreads out his appetite
Into a network, twist on twist,
This little ancient scientist.
He does not know he is unkind,
He has a jewel for a mind
And logic deadly as dry bone,
This small son of Euclid's own.
By Robert P. Tristram Coffin