instructional poem

rabbits sleep warm in bed but mice watch the stars

through a darkened window as penguins caper

in the antarctic – you know kangaroos live in australia

& zoos, right skip? four fingers plus a thumb

give you an advantage over most other animals

(you won’t see a dog peeling oranges, for instance,

& every house will have at least an elephant &

a giraffe or two, but challenge them to cutlery & you’ll

eat their lunch.) never bite or scratch your friends

or stay up after nine o’clock, that’s asking for ghosts

to take you away, which is handy for halloween but

annoying for most of the rest of the year, & if we leave

the house by eight we can get to daycare on time.

later comes work & those songs your dad

can’t sing, except the frogger one which turns out

to be about a cat, & the moon isn’t really vanishing

it’s just a phase it’s going through bilbies were never

that good at astronomy.