BBrrrrrrr is Not for Bears
Bears hibernate the winter through.
They make a fool of me and you,
slogging through the icy streets
in boots that slip and beg for cleats.
I dream of life in sunny climes
and wish for green beyond the pines.
But snowy landscapes do not yield
and wishes don’t have much appeal
as frozen hands and frostbit toes
make narrow paths in fallen snow.
Icicles hold on to trees,
music in the chilling breeze.
I make it gingerly to my door
and drip a puddle on the floor,
I track in salt and sawdust too,
try to pound them off my shoes.
Alas, the salt has left white stains,
a mark of winter’s growing pains.
Still, there’s a glowing in the hearth,
a cup of steamy spicy broth,
hot chocolate too if I desire
to sip before the open fire.
A smile returns to warm my face
as shivers leave without a trace.
My window shows a happy sight:
the children play into the night.
Snow is a gift to kids, you see,
but snow brings out the bear in me.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Noah Questions His Assignment
He says, but God, whoa now, wait just a minute, wouldn’t You be good,
whatever good is, if You hung out here on the planet for six hundred years? I mean
I don’t know what You’ve seen that makes You want to drown everybody and everything, but I know for a fact that Slom, over there, has carved some pretty happening stuff on his cave wall and he’s been a real fine next-skin neighbor too.
Up the mountain there, those two kids, Balatel and Jevia, are just married and I think she’s expecting. Their family really are co-operators, always bring me and my boys, and Hell, all my daughters-in-law and the kids, plenty of meat and grubs and those little green things they find in the forest. Why they once killed a Wooly Fry-Tooth Marnartak, and carved it up and brought us some of the flanks for flanken. We smacked our gums on that one, I assure you, and all they wanted was to take home one of Sebath’s wives; for which Sebath was actually grateful, his cave being overrun with the lot of them and their brats,
I mean, brood.
So OK, I’ve seen some nasties too in my six hundred years, but I like the human race. Truthfully I’m a bit tired, and wrinkled pretty bad, and my new wives won’t let me–You know (heck, You invented it!). So, what I’m trying to say is, do You have to go through with this dreadful drenching? I mean, what if You only, say, did a small earthquake
or maybe shot off one of your volcanoes. That’ll teach ‘em.
I HAVE SPOKEN!!!!!
So where do I find Gopher Bark, and how many rats did you say?
Afterword
Noah built the ark and the animals they came in by twosie twosie and it rained for forty days and forty nights. And everyone and everything was dead. Man, the seabed
was a layer of bones.
The part of the story you haven’t heard is that Noah is still alive, living in Bensonhurst, and he looks around at the world from his 2000 year old eyes and says to himself, because he knows that God is not listening; What was all that for?