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Portrait of the Artist as a Lone Tree

Assonant Animals

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Harold the Platypus

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Harold the Platypus, made from spares
digs blissfully at unawares;
his beaver's tail, and beak of duck
look strange, but seem to bring him luck.
For old as all the hills is he -
older than such as you or me -
who swam around Gondwanaland
in river beds of mud and sand.

Harold has lost his family;
duck-billed, but kind of mammally;
walks like a serpent, rows with his feet -
milk without breasts, and half incomplete -
fur on his body, webs on his toes,
he will cause laughter wherever he goes.
But watch for the spur from his hindmost leg hung -
you might think it's funny, until you get stung!

Yet stranger than all of our modes of perception -
our Harold relies on electro-reception!
He digs with his beak, and finds shrimps in the mud -
crayfish, worms, insects, all lost in the flood -
a varying voltage just gives him a tweak,
and he picks them all up in a pouch in his cheek.
Then he swims to the burrow he dug in the sand,
to eat all alone what he found with his gland.

This assonant animal suggested by Martina

Contents Page 128About

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