A Menagerie Of Animals

From Things You Find in a Poet's Beard by A.F. Harrold

i.

Great grey belly porker,

toothy yawning slug,

cow-nosed submarine,

giant in the mud,

unlikely ballerina

tip-toes underwater,

sleepy swampland-island,

river’s favourite daughter.

ii.

Stripy-armoured tiny tiger,

pollen-pouched and humble,

a fairy-small furry flyer,

content to simply bumble.

iii.

An African agitator,

sleeping now, snapping later,

Living log with beady eyes,

a flash of jaws and something dies.

Antelope and sleek gazelle

know the dangers very well,

are careful by the river Nile’s

toothy and serrated smiles.

iv.

Fish-chasing waiters,

waddling torpedoes,

ice-footed flipper-flappers,

swimmers with no speedos.

v.

Knitting hunter,

insect hater –

catch them now,

eat them later.

vi.

Orange as a sunset,

red as a pillar-box.

Entering the chicken coop,

unwelcome as Goldilocks.

vii.

As big as houses end to end,

glimpsed and then it’s gone,

an island for a mariner

he won’t step foot upon.

A water feature fountaining

between the foaming waves,

an oily mountain sinking fast,

takes plankton to their graves.

viii.

Purr-bearer,

fur-wearer,

tail-tosser,

mouse-bosser.

ix.

At first a dot,

then a hop.