As I Paddled the River Nile
As I paddled the river Nile
I met a monstrous crocodile.
She smiled at me enticingly.
I smiled deferentially.
Through large white teeth to me she said,
"I want you in my river bed."
"We are not acquainted enough
for such intimate, tasteless stuff,"
I cried. A hippopotamus
opined, "Hey, we're amphibious.
We're inclined to romp through marshes;
come, let's crush some reedy rushes."
I paddled hard away. The Nile
now swirled by rapidly awhile
to the sea. There where its two brinks
grow apart it flows past a sphinx
who lies prone and thinks endlessly
deep thoughts about eternity.
For eons and eons his mind
thought thoughts about how to unbind
gravity from mentality
throughout universality,
that we might freely float;
no more need to paddle my boat.
Unfortunately, he has no gumption
to follow his least assumption;
but we do chat on fluently
of, to wit, stuff way beyond me
like hieroglyphic-ally writ
papyri. When he will not quit
I wander alone to a tomb
where lies Cleopatra, of whom
each schoolgirl knows; how her last gasp
came as she clasped to breast her asp.
Grasp that story's significance
twixt geometry class and dance.
Whilst she patronymic-ally
reigned, a most royal Ptolemy;
she told Marc, "My new last 'nym' now'll
be 'Anthony'." This, post her roll
out, quite nude, from Julius' rug.
His offer of sex met her mere shrug.
I stood amid a pyramid
or three and pondered where they hid,
these pharaohs, all their treasury.
Was power or mere pleasury
their true architectural plan?
To ever tell, no pharaoh can.
These writs I write as my boat drifts
midst original hieroglyphs
through the Mediterranean.
I don't need a librarian
to see, no sociology
compares to Egyptology.
Copyright ©
John Smith
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