This poem appeared in LADYBUG in April 2018. 

This poem was commissioned by my three-year old niece. She knew I wrote poems and wanted me to write one about a "just because hug." Her wish was my command. Years later it was published in Kenn Nesbitt's wonderful anthology, "One Minute Till Bedtime," which is a book I strongly recommend to all parents of small children.

Just because you’re a horse, does that mean you have to go around say­ing “neigh” all the time? The horse in this poem didn’t think so. There’s some­thing about moo­ing that’s just so darn hard to resist. Let’s see how it turned out. (The poem orig­i­nally appeared in Bum­ber­shoot).

This poem, which was orig­i­nally pub­lished in Bum­ber­shoot, starts with the fol­low­ing ques­tion then goes on to answer it:

If Morris’s cho­rus is bet­ter than Boris’s,
Boris’s cho­rus can out­sing Dolores’s,
Dolores’s cho­rus is bet­ter than Horace’s, 
and Horace’s cho­rus is bet­ter than Doris’s, 
can Doris’s cho­rus be bet­ter than Morris’s?

Did you ever won­der why cer­tain pre­fixes aren’t more pop­u­lar? Take “ig,” for exam­ple. As this poem points out, “ig” is pretty much restricted to a hand­ful of words such as “igno­ble.” But why not use it all the time? The poem orig­i­nally appeared in Bum­ber­shoot.

I’m an unlucky fella,
there is no doubt.
I bought an umbrella … 
we had a drought.

Some­times it seems that every­thing I buy ends up being use­less. But that gives me an idea!

When chick­ens squawk­ing in the coop
squat down on their chicken legs
they’re some­times mak­ing chicken poop
and some­times mak­ing chicken eggs.

When this poem first appeared in Anon Two, the edi­tor (Mike Stocks) sug­gested in his intro­duc­tion that these lines could be viewed as a metaphor for what poets pro­duce. Like chick­ens, poets are capa­ble of two very dif­fer­ent kinds of work prod­uct when they go about their business.