Thirty-seven moves in my married life.
I jumped into each new situation ready to make friends.
There is almost always something I like about everybody.
I drag them home to introduce them to my husband.
He’s not as fond of people as I am.
Now I had friends.
Bam!
We moved again.
One time a minister came to welcome me to the neighborhood.
She was too late. I had been there a month.
I was rude, because I was busy packing.
Moving again.
Another time my children got on a school bus with three gerbils.
To give them away, because we were moving across country.
Two enormous dogs and three cats were enough trouble for the car ride.
Moving became my way of life.
People asked if my husband was in the military.
They knew I wasn’t because I did not have combat boots.
He didn’t either, but no one knew him or me.
Because we were always moving.
The octopus sometimes forgets
Its suckers when gerbils it pets.
It sticks to its arm,
Then falls, to some harm,
Which both of them deeply regrets.
My husband comes in and says “Pack up! We are moving!”
It is a game that he plays, frequently, for he usually hates someone.
I am thrilled to death of course, so I begin dancing and grooving.
Pack up three gerbils, two dogs, three daughters. What fun!
What a great time for me! I think as I quit yet another school.
At this rate I shall never have a degree of any kind at all.
We eat cereal again, for the pans are packed, which is so cool.
I am starting to load the van up with sixteen boxes from the hall.
Moving! You just got here! Says a neighbor who does not understand.
What it is like to be married to a “green grass is there” kind of man.
I yell at my sister and mother to come over and give me bit of a hand.
They get here after I have filled up our make-shift moving van.
Can you please just take the sixteen bags of garbage to your place?
Vacuum the house and lock the door and return the key to Grace?
My relatives know the score; they stare at me, shaking their heads.
I give a jaunty wave, and jump in the van, eager to put up our beds.
My child came home from kindergarten and said
“My teacher Mrs. Ballywack is so NICE!”
I was amazed; I had not heard anything good about the woman.
“She said, Tracy Krutsinger, if you think you are so smart,
You can come up here and teach the class!”
I love it that sarcasm did not hurt her.
She is too upbeat and positive to recognize it.
She has been a joy to us her entire life.
Now she brings us her children, who are also joys for us.
They have dogs, cats, and gerbils.
They are open minded, and love everyone.
And none of them would recognize sarcasm.
How marvelous is that? They have such a great mom!
Some days, it's best to keep still!
One needs to get some rest.
And abuse of your time might make
you quite ill.
Get off-line, enjoy your time on earth,
It is, after all, the very best!
Alas, we are at Times like gerbils in cages!
We run on endless treadmills
That desire to be Number One, wildly rages.
Take time to be centered, be you,be loving and be still.
We are not our poetry, nay, we are far more than than that.
There is a world that needs tending to.
We are humans that think, and more
intelligent than any cat!
So, take a breath, relax,, close your
eyes, outdoors in your best sun hat.
8/23/2021
1
The owl is wise
The fox clever
The burro stubborn
The puppy dog never
Cats meow
Snakes hiss
Cows moo
Goldfish kiss
Kangas jump
Eagles soar
Bunnies hop
A walrus snores
Gerbils are messy
Who'll clean up
If you buy me a rabbit
I may eat it for sup
My flexibility has been recorded by practically no one
Yet it is my greatest, most brilliant, terrific superpower.
I have moved thirty-seven times, and have had twenty-eight jobs.
Along for the ride were three daughters and a zoo of animals.
My husband used to come in and say “pack up, we’re moving.”
We moved dogs, cats, hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs, rabbits.
We moved and moved and moved and moved and moved.
I ended up attending over thirty colleges, some no longer than two weeks.
I am flexible, I told myself, I am bendable, I will not break. I will smile.
I jumped into new situations with enthusiasm, hope, eager to please.
I found friends, I volunteered, I played hard, I walked, I ran, I played hard.
Flexibility is my most obvious super power, and I have done well with her.
gerbils have the best
kidneys, less waste, odorless
clean, best at thumping
2019 September 18
Gerbils poem
Two black eyes
Peep out of the bedding
A quivering nose
And not much more
A tail as thick
As a bit of string
It is a gerbil
Is it not?
Two blue eyes
Look into my bedding
Arms and legs
And a good deed more
Clumsy and huge
I wonder why
It grows so slow
And grows so high
It is a person
Is it not?
Copyright © 2017 Diane Cassels
A ship in a dip is a duplicate of a massive six ton truck echoing at nine miles an hour in a tunnel. Oh traffic rather stoic today. But trafficking is often great fun for gerbils weighing in at over eighty pounds. £ % £ % waffling. Waffles and lots of cream. Iced curves in mazes. Vast tunnels of elephants then. Played with a big shrew in a big field. How great the ears of a geological gelding reading an encyclopedia in reading glasses. The small antique table. Steady hands are hooves. Freezing is the device of a used tabletop tablet score. Wisdom is neither obtained from a scientific sheet or a statistic paper. Lust lusting laughing leering leaning longitudinal leftovers. And a very smiley face of a bin. Bean beaming braking branching. Hahahaha and now a big wave waving. Hahahaha and a minnow. Xxxx jeopardisation. Xxxx palaeontology z
I hope you get this postcard
From Morphinialand
There really is so much to see
Read on, you’ll understand
Latex geese ride rubber ducks
That fly along the ground
While newly discovered welliphants
Wait in lost and found
Blueberry flavored raindrops
Climb up from a deep glue sky
As inter-dimensional wilder beasts
Feast on lion pie
Toffee Banana Rivers
Wend their merry way
Around candy cotton sugar puffs
From the Milky Way
Physic black umbrellas
Predict the weather will be fine
In this land of gumballweed
Built on melty time
Ice blue cooling sunbeams
Make everything rather tacky
And falling leaves from porcupine trees
Make for excellent wacky backy
Chocolate covered gerbils
Fly faster than the speed of sound
Perched in tree tops going “cheep”
At half a dozen for a pound
Yes it’s wonderful to be here
So here I am going to stay
Sorry I won’t be home tomorrow
I’ve made plans for yesterday
The following poem is based on a true story
We were sitting down one evening when the phone began to ring,
“Hello mum,” said Father, “Can I help with anything?”
Grandmother then answered, “There’s a gerbil in my house!”
“Do you really mean a gerbil? Don’t you mean a mouse?”
“I’m certain it’s a gerbil,” My grandmother defended,
“And the fact you think I’d get that wrong makes me feel offended.”
“I’m sorry, but a gerbil? Are you really sure?”
“Yes I am. It must be one of those they’ve got next door.”
“We’re on our way.” Said my Dad and then hung up the phone,
And then within the hour we were at Grandmother’s home.
“Ok Mum, please tell me, just what did you see?”
“It came out from the kitchen and went under the TV.”
Dad went in a cupboard and then took out a trap,
Set it with some chocolate and waited for the “Snap!”,
It only took a moment, and what do you suppose?
A great big rat staggered out, the trap caught on its nose!
Dad chased it to the garden and gave it quite a whack,
“It’s ok Mum, that gerbil is never coming back”,
“Thank you Son, you know that I’d have struggled doing that,
But it could have been so much worse. It could have been a rat!”
Jonah invented the whale
The first man ever to sail
He went round the globe
In his best Sunday robe
His invention was destined to fail
For Noah had plans for an ark
It’s construction no walk in the park
It took a few years
Some blood sweat and tears
But finally Noah made his mark
His wife tried most every ruse
To convince him to go for a cruise
He said, “I’ve been told
To fill up the hold
With gerbils and bush kangaroos”
They brought on the creatures in pairs
The rhinos and hippos downstairs
But space was so tight
Some put up a fight
Especially the grizzly bears
When the rains came the ark was a float
And Noah, on the bridge he did gloat
Saying “didn’t I say?
It would happen one day”
Said his wife “I could rip out his throat,
This is not what most folk call cruising
With gorillas and lemmings and ewes in
My cabin at night
It just isn’t right
I don’t find it very amusing”
So Noah’s wife concocted a plot
To scupper her hubbys new yacht
With her turn at the wheel
Her nerves she did steel
And crashed into Mount Ararot
Porcupine Romance
Ouch ¡
Carefully does it
Practice French kissing a cactus first
Ouch !
The last tango in Paris was never like this
Get it
French
Paris
kissing a cactus ( Porcupine humour )
Ouch !
What a fool I was to buy her roses
As if I didn’t have enough to contend with
Ouch !
Do they sell aerosol cans of instant easy foam
In porcupine sex shops
Yeeouch !
Did she just do that on purpose
No wonder there aren’t that many of us
Why wasn’t I born a hedgehog
Its no wonder I am attracted to squirrels
When will they invent the missionary position
Gnnnnmmmmpp
No its ok honey it didn’t hurt
Yes I know my love that quill is really long
Crying no….me no… I just have something in my eye
What do you mean you’re attracted to gerbils
Try using a prophylactic
A flaming suit of armour would be more like it
Awww honey come on I didn’t mean it
Gives us a kiss
Ouch !
Why is it the poached egg, betimes
so hard to peel, I wonder.
Why does the strutting hen lay eggs
so hard to pull asunder.
She wants that egg to be her chick
and not my wretched breakfast.
Or, wants her chick be Easter gift
dyed yellow, red, and purples--
A better choice for any child
instead of gerbils.
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