The Waffle Tree
Waffles, waffles, waffles, waffles,
Every branch holds golden waffles
Toasted by hot sun all summer.
Twining through the leaves, a hummer
Takes the syrup, leaves the butter
For the furry clans that putter
Up and down the waffle tree’s trunk.
Now a young towheaded quidnunc
Climbs to find out how those waffles—
Just think, one whole tree of waffles!—
Got there, and how he might prosper,
Prosper like a highborn Hotspur,
Raising rows of waffle trees he
Patented and grew in Fiji
So Green Bay could feast on waffles—
Fiji-Grown Organix Waffles—
All through fierce Midwestern winters.
Sadly, his plan cracks in splinters
As that magic tree of waffles,
Every branch a feast of waffles,
Bends and snaps as he climbs up it,
One rapacious, seedy puppet
Bent on making one gosh-awful
Profit from a tempting waffle.
The Bobolink
A silly name, I thought, like Tilt-a-Whirl.
Besides, the only birds we ever saw
were Grant Park pigeons, sparrows dirty pearl-
gray, and the Cardinals that enforced the law
the Cubs must lose another baseball game.
So I forgot about the bobolink,
forgot its image in the book. Why blame
myself? Ghost boats should be allowed to sink.
Then, walking in the woods, I took a turn,
and there I saw again, perched on a reed,
the pattern of the bird, and came to learn
the real bird was a handsome one indeed,
indifferent to its name and to a man
long years from where his biases began.
Poorer Richard
Too early to bed, too early to rise
Makes all the world certain you’re acting unwise.
What no one can tell you, thus sealing your fate:
How early’s too early, how late is too late.