APRIL IS FOR AMBYSTOMIDS

National Poetry Month is almost over, and favorite poems have been posted all over the blogosphere. The best ones I've seen are up on Science & Politics. Leave it to Coturnix to post two (count 'em) poems about Axolotls (Ambystoma mexicanum). This post awakened in me long-repressed memories of a Wordsworth parody I read in MAD magazine as a kid--a poem that left me haunted and broken as its narrator. Without ado (or permission) I repeat it for you, to the best of my recollection:

I wandered lonely as a clod,
Just picking up old rags and bottles;
When onward on my way I trod,
I saw a host of axolotls.
Beside the lake, beneath the trees
A sight to make a man's blood freeze.

Some had handles, some were plain;
They came in blue, red, pink and green.
Some were orange in the main--
The damnedest sight I've ever seen.
The females gave a spritely glance,
The male ones all wore knee-length pants.

Now oft, when on the couch I lie,
The doctor asks me what I see.
They flash upon my inward eye
And make me laugh in fiendish glee.
I find my solace now in bottles,
And I forget them axolotls.
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illustration: GAINER--BELTED KINGFISHER--detail (1995) acrylic 30" x 20"