KROH/CROC

THE CELLAR

Below the grassy surface

Of a hillock,

In a dark and dankish

Crayfish cellar,

Stood a cage

With one bird in it.

Minute after boring minute,

Hour after day,

She watched the crayfish vats,

And wondered why fish looked

As odd as they,

And why they called them cray.

It comes from Middle French crevis
  An elderly acquaintance

In the corner told her,
Though French is not

My field of expertise.

Then, getting bolder

He went on, but tell me why

You call yourself

An alligator bird,

A name I've never heard.

Replied the bird,

It's a question of poetic meter;

Alligator bird sounds neater

Than crocodile bird,

A/k/a African plover,

Which is what I really am,

My species no doubt

Smuggled over.

But that name, like the one

My mother gave me,

Is poetically unscannable.

And what name might that be?

She called me Annabel,

Annabel Lee, a bunch

Of syllables and stresses

Useless to an honest poet.

How well I know it,

Sighed the man,

And how often I've despaired

At having my name and addresses,

PhD and M.Sc.'s

Poetically impaired.

My name, you see, is

J. A. Prufrock,

And I'm a homeless

Ornithologist.

At this, the alligator bird,

Tipping one eye

Toward the corner, asked him

Was he sleeping there on gunny

'Cause he'd lost

His job and money?

Just so, said he,

As wing-ed species go extinct

There's less work

For the likes of me,

Whose specialty

Is birdies having vital signs.

When pulse and breathing go away

I find I've nothing more to say.

It's at such times

An honest ornithologist resigns.

The captive bird let out a sigh.

It's good to hear

That somewhere out there

Honesty's alive and kicking;

The evil croc
Who put me in this cage

Deserves a licking.

Dr. Prufrock could not

Believe his ears.

You say a croc is holding you?

A crocodile?

A beast that lives one hundred years,

That grows nine meters long,

And has a jaw so strong and big

That it can down a full-sized pig?
That's right, the bird replied,

That's Crockafeller to a T,

A croc as mean as mean can be,

And big as he is mean.

Then, panicked by a mortal dread

J. A. Prufrock said,

I-better-leave-before-I'm-seen.

But it already was too late

To latch onto a different fate;

In minutes he was found and drowned

And served up on a dinner plate.

And with his vital signs away

He found he had no more to say,

And though he wanted to resign

They washed him down

With Beaujolais.