Wednesday, September 07, 2005

S.Y.S.: A Poem that Forced the Issue

I have a good variety of little stories in store for you, and I’m halfway through two more as I sit here.  But tonight I have to get something else off my chest and out of my mind.  For months now a particular strange little phrase has pestered me.  I can’t stop repeating it to myself sometimes, and other times I think I’ve evaded its power when all of a sudden I can’t think of anything else.  It’s really taken over to an unacceptable degree and the only way for me to overcome it is to give in to it.  Here it is, then: the poem that arose from the weird little phrase I couldn’t stop thinking.  As the sages said, better you than me. 

S.Y.S.

The yeti is a hairy beast
who lives in the forboding east,
amidst the mountains cold and high
where clouds are carpets for the sky.
The serengeti, in contrast,
consists of praries broad and vast,
baked under Africa’s hot sun
where wildebeast and jackals run.
One hardly would expect to see
a sunbaked African yeti,
and just as strange, or stranger yet,
the snowbeast on the serenget.
Yet this is just what I once found
out on that ancient hunting ground -
beneath an arid little glade
a yeti sweltered in the shade.
How he arrived at such a spot
is something I could answer not
I only knew he just looked beat
perspiring in the torpid heat.
The sweaty yeti of the serengeti
looking awfully out of place
all he knows is ice and snow
of which there was no trace. 

I came to him as there he lay
exhausted in the heat of day
he looked at me both up and down
and sighed without the strength to frown.
This curiosity exotic
regarded me with gaze quixotic
as if to ask me not to ask
how in this place he’d come to bask.
I, in my turn, looked back at him
and felt a fate upon him grim
his massive body almost lost in
prostration and heat exhaustion. 
His sweat around him formed a pool
that kept him anything but cool;
his shaggy mane with mud was caked;
he licked his lips with thirst unslaked.
Not wishing to provoke attack,
I slowly opened up my pack
and as his perspiration trickled
I offered him my last creamsicle. 
The sweaty yeti of the serengeti
stretched on his enormous shanks
I let him eat the frozen treat
and took the stick from him as thanks.

There you have it, good people.  Who says poetry has to blow chunks?  Who so sayeth, indeed?  and with that, have a very happy Thursday.  Don’t forget to share dessert.