Homegrown Poetry

In the last blog I was writing about going through our parents' belongings and deciding what to keep and what to throw away. Yesterday Laura was going through my old scrapbook that includes a lot of little treasures from when she was quite a bit younger. We enjoyed a few good laughs and were touched by some findings. I had forgotten much of what was inside the book. A favorite is some poetry that Paul wrote in the sixties. He always kept a journal but this poetry is rare. He was not impressed with himself for writing poetry, but I was impressed. I liked it so much that I copied some without his permission. He now knows that I did this so I'm sharing them with you.

   

                                                   White Crowned Sparrow

                                      White Crowned Sparrow with the yellow beak,

                                          What kind of wiggleworms do you seek?

                                                 I don't eat worms, I eat seeds,

                                            They are sufficient to fill my needs.

                                                 So what of the wiggleworms,

                                                    What happens to them?

                                                  They're eaten by a blackbird

                                                       Whose name is Clem.

                                                      Clem is a blackbird

                                                         So big and fat.

                                                        He's even chased

                                                          A skinny cat. 

  

                                                                         

                                  Clem, the Brewers Blackbird, was big and fat

                                     He even chased, as you know, a skinny cat.

                                   He chased him from room to room on the fly

                               Till the kitty's master came and baked him in a pie.

                                 The pie baked at one hundred degrees fahrenheit,

                                    Gave Clem a hotbeak so he took to flight,

                                          Singing, "I am not a dainty dish,

                                          When cats really should eat fish.

                                     I'll not be the one to make a skinny cat fat."

                                                    Black Brant Brando

                                Black Brant Brando with the waddly webbly feet

                            Wandered along the bayside in search of food to eat.

                     His waddling changed to runling  when a Plymouth Station Wagon

                        Chased him along the bankside until his tail was draggin'.

                                     He drug down into the salty watery bay

                                         Doing his very best to swim away,

                                     When in the middle of the bay he saw

                                  That the Plymouth didn't want him after all.

                                      Much relieved, he went about his hunt

                              Trying to avoid becoming just a duck sized runt.

                                 For wasn't he already the smallest of the gooses?

                              Yet his ambition was to be bigger than the mooses                                                                            

                                                        

If you heard me laughing as I typed this I wouldn't be surprised. Paul has a sense of humor that I haven't always appreciated, but I loved these when he wrote them and I still do even after all these years. He was a fledgling birder in the mid sixties when he wrote these. He didn't even use the term "birder" in those days. He said "bird watcher" as most people would.

As I continue to go through my treasures I'm sure I'll find more to share. We found some of my water color paintings last week that makes me want to buy some new paints and brushes.

Poems by Paul W. Marvin,Jr.

Image credits: jessicafm; SamJuk; gdahlman