No Eden Here
No Eden here, for there’s no snake;
There’s just a thief who likes to take
The labors of all our hard work.
My blood is boiling, half berserk
Near stripped of reason, one thing’s clear:
I’m settling the score this year.
You stole my beans; you spoiled my beets.
The woods are full of things to eat!
But no, you just keep coming back,
And so I went on the attack.
At first I built a gleaming fence;
A week went by, no incidents,
And so I thought I had success
Only to find, to my distress,
The telltale signs, so clearly seen:
The heads chewed off my precious beans!
So, cursing, fuming, full of ire,
I wrapped the fence with smaller wire.
Ha! That should do it, that should quash
Your tendencies towards yellow squash.
And then the fence, electrified
So I could zap your little hide
Repel you with a lethal charge
So you would not so rudely barge
Upon my carrots and my beans,
Just disappear, ne’er to be seen.
And still you managed your way in!
My patience? Well, it’s far past thin.
And so I wrapped beneath the deck;
I even trapped you there, and heck,
Some poisonous, foul-smelling bait
I hoped would end you when you ate,
But somehow you just hunkered down
And stayed there underneath the ground
Till sure, I thought, you must be dead,
And trust me, dear, no tear was shed.
And then again! You thief! You fraud!
The carrot tops have all been gnawed!
And lo, at night, in dark and gloom
You’ve broken free from earthly tomb
And tunneled clean beneath the wall
That holds back chaos from the Fall.
My little Eden ravaged, raped,
And somehow you again escaped
To burrow back beneath the deck,
But not before you, vicious, wrecked
Cucumbers hanging from the vine,
So succulent, so plump, so fine!
And so more wire upon the ground
With heavy rocks to weight it down.
Too great a length for you to span,
Or so I thought; that was the plan.
But morning comes, and Crikey! Ugh!
For it appears you nearly dug
Your way to freedom in my plot.
A flash, a momentary thought:
This garden’s doomed, it’s all for naught
Perhaps I should, perhaps I ought
To simply burn it to the ground,
And once the flames have smoldered down
Collect your brutish, charred remains,
But then I shook off thoughts insane
And pondered how you might be pent
By spilling bags of dry cement
Among the gravel and the mesh
To thwart your nasty rodent flesh
From gaining access sight unseen
And ravaging my precious beans.
So horrified was I to find
The workings of your evil mind;
You tunneled under concrete pad
And left me miserable and sad.
The rage ensues, blood turns to boil,
The images of gun’s recoil;
I dream of ways to make you die:
To drown, to poison, why, oh, why
Are you obsessed with garden fruits?
Why don’t you find other pursuits
And leave my little plot alone;
This is a mystery, ‘tis not known.
This year, believe me when I say
I’m going to end this Groundhog Day.
Copyright © Jeff Kyser | Year Posted 2022
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