Warm Feelings About Worms

Warm Feelings About Worms
by Hazel Nutter also known as Angela Lansbury

A garden's got a million worms
Your eyes are filled with doubt
Just go and watch those little birds
Which keenly hop about

They know something which we don't know
As each bird taps its beak
They seem to be the winners
In their game of hide and seek

I'm standing at the window
And watch the daily show
Nasty worms aerate lawns
But taste good when birds swallow

I try to see the bright side
Worms do a lot of good
I try to see the light side
To birds a worm is food

I've a sandwich in my hands
I lick my lips and munch
All those birds with open beaks -
Those birds are out to lunch!
-ends-
out to lunch, idiom meaning crazy

Text Copyright Angela Lansbury 2018.
Photo by Per Harald Olsen.
My draft of the poem had the pun, but look good to a swallow. I hoped some readers would spot the pun on the birds, swallows.
I checked what swallows eat and they eat flying insects, not worms. So I changed the line to read But tast good when birds swallow 
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Read my travel posts, too. Many of them have a hidden irony, or damn with faint praise.
travelwithangelalansbury.blogger.com

Love is like a cuckoo

Love is like a cuckoo
by Hazel Nutter (aka Angela Lansbury)

Love is like a cuckoo
I love to hear it sing
But other people warn me
It's fun, it's false, it's bling

It wants to shove the others out
It wants to be the one
It does not care for others
When all is said and done

A cuckoo starts off small
But it grows big and hungry
You race about to feed it
It's ungrateful - and angry!

Cuckoo from Wikipedia.

If you suspect a cuckoo
What is it you should do?
Make sure you are not cuckoo
And the cuckoo's not with you.

-ends-
Copyright Angela Lansbury.
Photo by Per Harald Olsen.

Poem inspired by Dolly Parton's Love Is like a Butterfly.
I watched a butterfly flutter past and thought, just write a song starting  LOVE IS, making a metaphor from something you see. My first thought was bird.

I thought of names of birds, Magpie, Robin, cuckoo. Cuckoo offered the greatest opportunities for puns and metaphors. I might try Robin next.
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See my travel posts on
travelwithangelalansbury.blogger.com

Happy Days Scoot Past

Happy Days Scoot Past by Angela Lansbury

I stroll to swim, every morning
Down to the cool, soothing blue pool
I find friendly, helpful teachers
I learn from birds the 'stay calm' rule

I hear taxis to the airport
Tooting, 'Mind out!' on their hooter
A happy small girl swings, zooms round
Sings on her go nowhere scooter

The tall palm trees are waving, hey
Hello, hello, in the fresh breeze
A woodpecker climbs bark to his
Solo penthouse, in shady trees

Stay alert, look round and forwards
And rarely, carefully, look back
But mostly search for friends and food.
See what you've got, not what you lack.

A dacksund keenly sniffs the cacti
Forgetting all yesterday's hurts
Hundreds of birds join a chorus
That well-known round song: chirp, chirp, chirp!
-ends-
Copyright Angela Lansbury
Written after a swim in a pool in Singapore after seeing a girl on a scooter and woodpecker climb a coconut palm. The dog (on a lead taken for a walk)which stopped to sniff was a dachsund. Hooter rhymed with scooter. I contrasted of the impatient driver going to the airport with the girl who was happy without a destination.

You Are Shakespeare To A Baby

You may not write like Shakespeare
Nor have Picasso's eye
But your baby likes a nursery rhyme
And your soothing lullaby

You might not write like Shakespeare
That does not mean you're a fool
You can entertain a toddler
With a rhyming wash hands rule

I might not paint like Picasso
I draw a line with my mouse
I do not need lions nor sculptures
Just someone to paint my house.

Dears, the moral is quite simple
Shakespeare is fun for holidays
But bus drivers, toilet cleaners
Are what we need every day.
-ends-
Copyright Angela Lansbury
June 8 2018

The Little Summer Swimmer

The Little Summer Swimmer
by Hazel Nutter

Every morning you can see me take my early morning swim
Later in the grassy shadow, larking in my improvised gym

My family is large - half a dozen brothers and sisters
So when one of them went missing, when young, we hardly missed her

You may sit watching, glad you're human, from your carved and painted log
But I think I'm the lucky one, having been born a frog.
-ends-
2018 MAY 3RD
Hazel Nutter also known as (H) Angela Lansbury

Unrequited Love

Lost Love
by Angela Lansbury

You're just a happy memory
You found another somebody
You chose her and rejected me
Paths diverged for eternity

I had almost forgotten you
I made my life with someone new
I did what friends said I should do
Lived far away to erase you

So when you came and searched for me
My broken heart was mended, free
And I could smile, write hi, goodbye, and -
Thank you for the memory.

-ends-

Another Cockroach On The Floor and a Spider's Web Over The Bed

Another Cockroach on the Floor and a Spider Over The Bed
a lament by Angela Lansbury

I am barefoot in the bathroom
There's a cockroach on the floor
Which is worse, running or still -
Between me and the door?

If there's one thing I don't like
It's a spider on the bed
I'm sure its bad for flies
But now it hurts my head

Right now things would be better
If one of us were dead.

When I see a spider's web

Lurking empty overhead

I wonder where the spider's gone

It's bound to show, before too long

If I stay still and look around

Inspecting walls, ceiling and ground

Brooches shaped like beetles I don't like a bit
What use is a cockroach, a mosquito-ridden lake
Though I'm prepared to eat a pig-shape chocolate
And I've had round salmon-pink 'steak' from a cut-up snake

But another thing I don't like at all
Is ants on a table or desk
Although a gecko which eats them is useful
Up the wall, like me, devouring pests

We have filled the floor with insect traps
We're choking on insect spray
It's another day in the tropics
But neither they, nor I, will go away.

I read somewhere that cockroaches

Have survived a million years

Frankly a single insect, now

Is enough to tug at my fears

I can throw it through the window

Pretend I did it a favour

I didn't kill it - it might come back

Thinking I am its saviour.

-ends-