1

The Animals

They do not live in the world,
Are not in time and space.
From birth to death hurled
No word do they have, not one
To plant a foot upon,
Were never in any place.

For with names the world was called
Out of the empty air,
With names was built and walled,
Line and circle and square,
Dust and emerald;
Snatched from deceiving death
By the articulate breath.

But these have never trod
Twice the familiar track,
Never never turned back
Into the memoried day.
All is new and near
In the unchanging Here
Of the fifth great day of God,
That shall remain the same,
Never shall pass away.
-Edwin Muir




The Lion

The lion has a golden mane
and under it a clever brain.
He lies around and idly roars
and lets the lioness do the chores.
-Jack Prelutsky










2

To a Squirrel at Kyle-Na-No

Come play with me;
Why should you run
Through the shaking tree
As though Id a gun
To strike you dead?
When all I would do
Is to scratch your head
And let you go.
-William Butler Yeats




The Rabbit

When they said the time to hide was mine,
I hid back under a think grape vine.

And while I was still for the time to pass,
A little gray thing came out of the grass.

He hopped his way through the melon bed
And sat down close by a cabbage head.

He sat down close where I could see,
And his big still eyes looked hard at me,

His big eyes bursting out of the rim,
And I looked back very hard at him.
-Elizabeth Madox Roberts
















3

The Chipmunks Day

In and out the bushes, up the ivy,
Into the hole
By the old oak stump, the chipmunk flashes
Up the pole.

To the feeder full of seeds he dashes,
Stuffs his cheeks,
The chickadee and titmouse scold him.
Down he streaks.

Red as the leaves the wind blows off the maple,
Red as a fox,
Striped like a skunk, the chipmunk whistles
Past the love seat, past the mailbox,

Down the path,
Home to his warm hole stuffed with sweet
Things to eat.
Neat and slight and shining, his front feet

Curled at his breast, he sits there while the sun
Stripes the red west
With its last light: the chipmunk
Dives to his rest.
-Randall Jarrell



The Bat

By day the bat is cousin to the mouse.
He likes the attic of an ageing house.

His fingers make a hat about his head.
His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead.

He loops in crazy figures half the night.
Among the trees that face the corner light.

But when he brushes up against a screen,
We are afraid of what our eyes have seen:

For something is amiss or out of place
When mice with wings can wear a human face.
-Theodore Roethke

4


The Sloth

In moving-slow he has no Peer.
You ask him something in his ear;
He thinks about it for a Year;

And, then, before he says a Word
There, upside down (unlike a Bird)
He will assume that you have Heard

A most Ex-as-per-at-ing Lug.
But should you call his manner Smug,
Hell sigh and give his Branch a Hug;

Then off again to Sleep he goes,
Still swaying gently by his Toes,
And you just know he knows he knows.
-Theodore Roethke



A Mother Cries

The wolf howls in the darkness,
She lets the wind carry her cries.
Her silhouette on a hilltop,
The moon reflected in her eyes.
The agony she carries, the pain.
At her feet, the lifeless cub she bore.
In the animal kingdom it's the circle of life,
Nothing less and nothing more.
The moon casts down its sympathy,
As it blankets around her rabid soul.
Nature defenseless against man,
An innocent life that white man stole.
As her howl travels,
The hunter stops dead still.
For the hunted often holds revenge,
An angry mother, ready to kill.
Her silhouette no longer rests under the moon,
It runs through the old forest trees.
Her legs swift, much faster than the hunter.
His cries carry through the breeze.
- Amber Huether



5

What Is To Be Given

What is to be given,
Is spirit, yet animal,
Colored, like heaven,
Blue, yellow, beautiful.

The blood is checkered by
So many stains and wishes,
Between it and the sky
You could not choose, for riches.

Yet let me now be careful
Not to give too much
To one so shy and fearful
For like a gun is touch.
-Delmore Schwartz





Mice

I think mice
Are rather nice
Their tails are long,
Their faces small,
They havent any
Chins at all.
Their ears are pink,
Their teeth are white,
They run about
The house at night.
They nibble things
They shouldnt touch
And no on seems
To like them much.
But I think mice
Are nice.
-Rose Fyleman







6

The Frog

Be kind and tender to the Frog,
And do not call him names,
As "Slimy skin," or "Polly-wog,"
Or likewise "Ugly James,"
Or "Gap-a-grin," or "Toad-gone-wrong,"
Or "Bill Bandy-knees":
The Frog is justly sensitive
To epithets like these.

No animal will more repay
A treatment kind and fair;
At least so lonely people say
Who keep a frog (and, by the way,
They are extremely rare).
-Hilaire Belloc




Holding Hands

Elephants walking
Along the trails

Are holding hands
By holding tails

Trunks and tails
Are handy things

When elephants walk
In circus rings.

Elephants work
And elephants play

And elephants walk
And feel so gay.

And when they walk
It never fails

Theyre holding hands
By holding tails.
-Lenore M. Link

7

The Hippopotamus

The huge hippopotamus hasnt hair
on the back of his wrinkly hide;
he carries the bulk of his prominent hulk
rather loosely assembled inside.

The huge hippopotamus lives without care at a slow philosophical pace,
as he wades in the mud with a thump and a thud
and a permanent grin on his face.
-Jack Prelutsky



The Hedgehog

The Hedgehog sleeps beneath the hedge
As you may sometimes see
And I prefer it sleeping there
To sleeping here with me!
-J.J. Bell




Polar Bear

The secret of the polar bear
Is that he wears long underwear.
-Gail Kredenser





The Wild, the Free

With flowing tail, and flying mane,
Wide nostrils never stretched by pain,
Mouths bloodless to the bit or rein,
And feet that iron never shod,
And flanks unscarred by spur or rod,
A thousand horse, the wild, the free,
Like waves that follow oer the sea.
-Lord Byron



8


The Pig

The pig is not a nervous beast;
He never worries in the least.
He lives his tranquil life unshaken,
And when he dies brings home the bacon.
-Roland Young




Cat

The black cat yawns,
Opens her jaw,
Stretches her legs,
And shows her claws.

Then she gets up
And stands on four
Long stiff legs
And yawns some more.

She shows her sharp teeth,
She stretches he lip,
Her slice of a tongue
Turns up at the tip.

Lifting herself
On her delicate toes,
She arches her back
As high as it goes.

She lets herself down
With particular care,
And pads away
With her tail in the air.
-Mary Britton Miller