The polar bar
Had not got far
From where she had unfroze
Before the sun
Came to claim one
Fast favor he so chose:

“‘Twas not your life
That my bright knife
Saved from the starry ice.
But for a whim
You’d still be dim,
Life for life is my price.

My wish is this –
For freedom’s bliss
I’ll have your cub and done.
Give me my ask
Or go be masked
In ice as one sun shunned.”

Bar bit the sun
And ripped the moon
Out of him as the price
He dearly paid,
Mistake he made,
To learn self-sacrifice.

The polar bar
In her ice jar
Has sunshine in her throat,
And her cub lives
And grows and gives
Sun chills in fire coat.

“I’d rather lose my head
Than my wings,
The life in which I sing
And be dead,
Than let my lovely thread
Snap and spring
Back at my star-filled king,”
The crow said.

If the flowers loved me
There’d be no “loves-me-nots.”
Every petal would be “loves-me,”
Or even “loves-me-lots,”
But there’d be no loving flowers
If we pulled them all apart.
So maybe love the flowers
Who already have your heart.

You gave the rains of Holly Finn
To one who didn’t know
What to put a cloud in,
Where such a thunder goes,

So while that keeper did their best
They soon passed her rains on,
But fear no failing of the test
As storms have rarely gone

Away so far as to be lost
However far they roam,
And Holly Finn knew well the cost
Of bringing tempests home.

She painted mountains with her rains,
She cleaned the skies with seas,
She planted deep and dark domains
With rainbows as she pleased.

You gave the rains of Holly Finn
To one who couldn’t know
What to put a cloud in,
And off her thunder goes.

Harth made a pair of wings
That touched on dusk and dawn
And promised to fly on.

Yet such a blessing brings
In those with the same need
And now they came with speed.

So she made wings in waves,
Gave them till they were through,
Harth watched them fly away,
She, wingless, flew on to.

Many call me “Surly,”
Which, I’ll say, is true.
But if you call me “squirrelly”
I’ll be grumpy early
So “Sir,” for short, will do.

Rish stepped up to the butter box
And found it full of dust.
She ran her fingers like a fox
Tap-tapping as paws must
To find a path if they’re to catch
What slick and slippered mole
Her fox need hunt and haunt and fetch
From down its buttered hole.
And down it went! Down! Down it went!
Down dove the dusty fox!
Rish sent it off with fingers bent
Then melted in the box.

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,
Let a tiger have your toe,
If he hollers, then you know,
His bite’s smaller than most grow,
He’s no mauler of his foes,
Not a scholar of the low,
Not a dollar would you owe
If you were to let him go,
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.

I red a book for school
Just like the teacher said,
But she was mad as fools!
Was out to have my head!
Said she had never seen
Such crimes against a book!
How could I be so mean?
How much she shrieked and shook!
She dropped her heavy head
And with a warty snort
Said, “To pay for the red
You’ll white a book report.”

There’s giants in the rivers,
There’s titans in the creeks,
Sittin’, sippin’ on the trickle,
Fillin’ up their cheeks.

In streams you’ll find colossi,
In brooks leviathans,
The sunk and steeping,
Tucked and sleeping silent ones.

Ogres fill up runnels,
Behemoths dwell in rills,
Water runs down mountains
Into bellies big as hills.

And once they’re full of flood
They have promises to keep,
But for now they sweetly slumber,
For now they fill and sleep.