Sidney Beck Poet Footle

Fleas

FLEAS


Alarm clock   shows   Saturday   7 30. Yes, please!
More sleep  - a professional  delight for this catcher of fleas. 
For the  present,   I’m working from home at my ease
And my career may  be in permanent economic squeeze.
Before Covid,my  daily branch-swing to work took 45 minutes in the trees;
Now  no need to commute to the office on Saturdays. 

Just  swing down to breakfast….maybe cheese……..
Hope my wife has prepared something other than bananas and peas.
Gonna spend entire day working  from home,  charging no fees,
Checking  the  family fleas.
Uncle Bob  always has some dragged in from the quays
Usually  bigger  males  picked up somewhere is the seven seas.
So here’s me turning back Bob’s  fur and straining to seize 
The little moving pests, often down on my   knees.

Bob  doesn’t like sitting rock-still like some flea-prison trustees;
Would rather be swinging in the breeze-filled trees.
But he will chat endlessly about the state of the G 7  economies,
The latest stats about Covid 19, or wasp-stings,  or bees,
Vaccination rates   and social distances the length of two-skis,
How many fleas are being chased out of hospitals or galleries,
How many Capitol senators are  bitten in their arteries. 

Bob  assumes such chat is  less tedious in my search to please,
But actually I would prefer silence so that  I could watch in reprise
The  next episode of  ‘Life in the Amazon and Belize’  -
How the trainee-monkeys down south  avoid cough or sneeze
Especially the sort carried by fleas.
Aided by techno stuff  in 100 degrees 
With medicines  and vaccine from Buenos Aires. 
Sooner or later  my  from-home job of ease
Will be  under threat from medical monkey trainees.
Bob will have no more complaints about prison trustees or disease
And I’ll be able to go back swinging  in the breeze
To the office on Saturdays 
And read  the latest  research about fleas
South of the border or overseas.

7  April  2021

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