POISON IVY…VARIETY PACKED!

POISON IVY…VARIETY PACKED!

 

Consider the poison ivy plant

You often find its vines…

Stretching out upon the lawn,

Growing in straight lines.

–

That tiny vine, how does it grow,

To take over the lawn…

Getting rid of the stuff

Requires super-human brawn!

–

Every little snippet becomes

A full-grown plant…

If any touches skin,

You’ll itch until you rant.

–

It waves big red and yellow leaves

In Autumn, from woody stems…

Climbing up a tree trunk

For years with twists and bends.

–

Burn the stuff and its smoke

Can cause the brutal itch…

Gardeners, landscapers all

Learn the poison ivy twitch!

 

–Jonathan Caswell

 

THE DISTANT “MEOW”

THE DISTANT “MEOW”

 

I heard a distant “meow” today,

Might have been children hard at play….

From beyond the trees

Carried by a breeze,

‘Twas really hard to say.

–

This is a large parking lot

And some stray cats nearby we’ve got…

Perhaps my mind

Needs something kind,

To cheer me as it ought.

–

The “meow” I heard no more,

Just once, and none before…

Was it a child

Running wild,

Or a pussy cat I might adore?

 

–Jonathan Caswell

 

 

 

LANGUID LIMERICKS

LANGUID LIMERICKS

by Jonathan Caswell

–

Little green bug blown onto my table,

I wonder if you are able…

To tell from the wind

Where you might have been,

Or is the wind too unstable?

–

Random placement of tree branches,

Explained through fractal advances…

Seemedly random cause

Obeys fractal laws,

High-powered math has its advantages!

–

As shadows lengthen afternoons,

Even a poet assumes….

To avoid “Triple-E”,*

One soon must be

Inside before the mosquitoes zoom!

–

While checking for  chiggers and ticks,

Killing honey bees is nixed…

With so few bees

Left to pollinate trees

And flowers, any more gone will cause fruit to be deep-sixed**!

–

NOTES:

*Triple-E, or Eastern Equine Encephalitis, is an often fatal disease carried by mosquitoes.

**”deep-sixed”, another way of saying killed, died or buried (i.e.: six feet under the ground)

“fractals” refer to a mathematical way of modeling images on the computer…which has also been used to accurately determine the relative percentages of, for example, tree species in a forest, or in describing certain natural processes.