CAT
A cat got run over.
Belonged to a little girl.
Wow! Some poet, or other, could go to town on that.
The maudling and the cute and cosy weeping
could drip from every line.
But she said:
“It’s dead.
If it doesn’t get better, we’ll get another”
Still, she is very small
And the cat’s name was Fred.
Sometimes it got a bit fierce.
Sometimes it thought it was a dog –
following you about and things.
A cat, but just different enough to deserve a name:
Missed but not mourned.
Funny, the little girl seems to have
the right perspective, somehow.
BEARS
“Is it in the Smoky Mountains that the bears puff on their fags?”
Her mummy answered “Yes, or so I’m told”
Then in the Blue Mountains all the little bears
must be a funny colour ‘cos they’re cold.
The bears in the Pennines
could help me write lines
whilst in Brecon
they just beckon
when they can’t read the Welsh signs.
Have the bears in the Rockies all got funny heads?
And do Grampian bears moan all day long in their beds?
In the cold Himalayas do they all come from eggs?
I bet in the Pyrenees they have knobbly legs.
I s’pose a bear from the Alps
just yalps;
and there’s one from the Urals
who paints bear-garden murals
and drinks pints of vodka in galps.
HEDGEHOG
A little pile of soggy English autumn leaves
rises and moves slowly through the bushes.
A weasel peers anxious from its long grass, and breathes heavy.
A rat stares from the rushes.
The little pile of soggy English autumn leaves
slides out into a field and makes a rabbit
freeze halfway through a leap.
A mouse receives its biggest shock
since a hungry cat had tried to grab it.
The little pile of soggy English autumn leaves
stops with a squelch by a tree and a squirrel
backs down the trunk for a rest but then heaves
up like lightning, with its head in a whirrel,
and two very sore feet.
Why can’t a hedgehog
look like a hedgehog
and not like a seat?
TEA ROOM
Milk for the tea or coffee
comes separate in a fairy little jug.
So we all know the joint is middle class,
or at least pretentious, expensive and twee.,
No, not like “Price-a-Coffee” or “Café Black”;
More like the dated on purpose
little shops in every town.
Whispery gossip of well outdated-haired women
underscores, but never mingles with the
serious interest chatter of chequered ramblers,
the reserved mumbling of misplaced businessmen,
or, if alone, the faint clicks of their laptops,
or the imposing silence of their smart phones,
and the orders to beyond, by the bored and boring waitress.
Then a very little girl,
no higher than the table,
is having a real giggle and a romp.
No hush at all about this one,
as she expresses fun, dislikes and curiosity.
But mostly fun.
Experiments with cellophane:
fancy it sticking without licking.
And on Daddy’s nose.
Success! But what about the spilt milk?
Not enough to splash in,
even for Tom Thumb,
and so, failure! But all things have interest,
immediate or by application:
Yes, by just doing.
From table to table:
Amusement? One or two.
Disinterest (which we know must only mean impartiality)
from those three in the corner,
who gaze at their cappuccinos
with the wrapt and wondrous apprehension
of lapsed narcotics, or maybe not so lapsed.
Indulgence is in places, but all with a flicker
of underlying embarrassment, that suppressed,
could always break out, at any unsuspecting moment,
spurred by the latent danger of such naivety nearby.
Middle: table, class and age:
Three haughty supercilious women
cast looks of fishy disapproval,
barbed with heavily sarcastic female asides
about parental control and discipline:
well-preserved, well made-up packages
for shrivelled personalities,
exposed for what they are alleged to exist for;
that is, if the latest hostile femininity (what a word!!)
would allow you to make that simple comment.
The little girl, in her natural awareness,
is yet unaware, and happily plays on.