Sessile

The lovely Sea Cucumber
Is rather prone to slumber.
Unlike the busy ant,
It gets mistook for a plant.

Product Idea

Someone needs to sell time-release safes for home snacks
To protect ourselves from late night craving attacks.

Tick

I hadn’t known the Tick
Was an Arachnid.
I'm sure some smart kid
Sitting in the back did.

Glad Hostage Is Free, But...

Why did we go from “minister”
To calling people “pastor”?
I’m sure it’s nothing sinister,
And not a big disaster,
But word-choice alteration
Always jars my brain.
Just when you know a language
It goes and changes again!

Staying On Track

From what I can figure, a train engineer
Doesn’t even have to steer.
They hit the gas, they hit the brakes,
And try to avoid catastrophic mistakes.

Dry

I talked to a Chicago police officer who had worked marathon support for the race here last Sunday. I asked about the weather and she said it rained a lot. So I suddenly felt I had stumbled into a bit of good fortune because it hadn’t rained that morning in Milwaukee, where I was running that other marathon.

I’m not quite sure that made up
For hours of extra travel,
But something about cold rain
Makes my brain unravel.

Milwaukee

After steady forecasts of rain this morning, and after a rainy early morning drive from Chicago to Milwaukee, the rain stopped for the actual marathon.

Went out way too fast
And had to slow down
But still had a blast
Seeing the town.

Driving Out Of My Way

I was downtown today, to do some work. The place was jammed with out-of-towners here to run or watch the Chicago Marathon. Forty-thousand runners, that's a lot.

Even more people would like to run it, if they could, but forty thousand is some kind of practical limit. So they put in a lottery to get in, for normal people, like me.

Tomorrow is the Chicago Marathon,
But I'm not going to run it, I'll be gone,
Off to Milwaukee to run a marathon there.
Such are the burdens that lottery losers must bear.

Pirate Pet Preference

Said the pirate with a parrot,
“Other pets are just absurd.
Neither dog, nor cat, nor ferret,
Can repeat your every word.
If your pocketbook can bear it,
Then you ought to buy a bird!”

Scholarly Advice

You want your homework
Eaten by a doggy?
Just add gravy -
Get it nice and soggy.

Street View Sighting

I saw the Google street view car.
Will I soon be a street view star?
Will I be shown for all to see
With blurred-out physiognomy?

Stella

Stella, our beloved cat,
Who always went tuxedo-clad,
After eleven lives, has passed,
Leaving us alone and sad.

We Had Them Laughing Last Night

The Matchmaker is your one and only chance,
To see me as the lead in a romance.
You’ll watch as I, an old and cranky miser,
Get ambushed by my social-life advisor.

Another Opening

Dress rehearsal’s done, it’s in the bag.
Now let’s hope we open without a snag.

The Matchmaker, by Thornton Wilder

Here’s a startling fact:
In this show I act.
I play a man named Horace,
A sort of tyrannosaurus,
Who endlessly rails about folly
But ends up outsmarted by Dolly.

Harvest Time

Most seasons have one name
And then there’s autumn/fall.
Can this be explained at all?
And who, pray tell, is to blame?

Tomorrow

I think the autumn equinox
Should be locked up in some dark box,
And summer needs to stick around
About six months, till spring is found.

The Root of the Problem

It’s my belief that “root canals” are dreary.
I much prefer the one that’s known as “Erie”.

Surge

Sometimes when acting a scene, I will feel a startling wave of emotion, emotion I didn’t plan on feeling, but that pertains to the character’s situation. The trigger is acting with another person, which has an amplifying effect. This is a hazardous moment for remembering my lines! Fortunately it’s mostly something that happens in rehearsal.

By the time we’re on stage
I know what to expect
And my concentration’s
Less likely to get wrecked.

Show Closing, Show Opening

Well, the 4-day Hale Park Theatre production of O'Brien & O'Brian is complete. I'm sad to wrap it up because it was so much fun while it lasted. We had nice big audiences every day, and on Saturday night we filled almost every seat. There was lots of laughter every night, and I heard from the cast that they had a lot of fun doing the show. It's the nature of live theater to be ephemeral, of course, but it's so intense while it's happening.

There is no rest for me, however, because I acting in a show - in the same festival at Hale - in about a week and a half. I'm playing Horace Vandergelder in Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker, which is the basis of the big hit musical, Hello Dolly. I'm playing the male lead, and of course at the end I am engaged to Dolly herself. It's a big part with lots of lines. I'm just about there on having all my lines by heart, which is good.

I've been pounding my lines
Into my brain
And it's holding up fine
Under the strain.