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Saturday, May 1, 2021

May 1, 2021

| |
| | elude, snowy, higher, cavort, charley horse.
Image from the Internet.

The opening poem contains all the words (or variations of them) from today's Jumble.
Comments are welcomed! And couching them in Poetry is definitely NOT required.
Do not explicitly reveal any of the actual answer words until after closing time, but embedding them surreptitiously in comment sentences is encouraged.

15 comments:

Sandyanon said...

C-, D+. No real wordplay.
What do you all think?

Ol' Man Keith said...

R*A*B*B*I*T***R*A*B*B*I*T
*R*A*B*B*I*T***R*A*B*B*I*T
Not especially clever, Sandy, but cute enough.
Better than some, not as good as others.

Happy May Day, all!
~ OMK

Ol' Man Keith said...


"Wheel of Fortune"
Charlie the Horse and Benny the Pill
had gambling habits that had no equal.
Of blackjack and craps they couldn't get their fill.
They raised the stakes higher when feeling needful.
They'd bet on bird calls; they'd bet on the weather;
they'd bet on whether to elude a go-getter.

The boys had had a church upbringing,
which ran counter to their love of winning.
They rarely lost; their guilt increased
with their wealth and fate's wheel spinning.
They gave thought now and then to how they might
give something back, but alas, kept sinning.

They bet on a snowy egret's egg,
whether it was an omelet--or fertile.
They cavorted all night when, sakes alive,
it hatched the darling lil' "Myrtle."
Myrtle turned out to be the prize
they hadn't expected her to be.
She could tell the future when, by surprise,
she picked out the winners on a racing sheet.
She pecked other wins in a code Benny knew
from his years in the signal corps.
Nothing escaped her ability, she was true
in every way they tested her for.

Poor Charlie and Benny, all the fun
of their gambling vanished within a week.
They decided to give Myrtle one last run
by betting against one another, a freak
bet by Charlie that Benny'd leave all to charity
(hoping to stimulate verity),
or from Benny that Charlie was the more set on it.
(Maybe this way they'd evade Kismet.)
But Myrtle pecked out, "Don't bet on it."
~ OMK

OwenKL said...

Wilbur Charles was the name of a horse.
High-spirited, he liked to cavort
'Cross daisied fields, grassy leas,
And just do as he'd horsey-well please!

Winter came, and he had a warm stable
With blankets, good hay, basic cable.
But he did not like being cooped in,
So broke out to the snow and brisk wind!

The ranchers he found easy to elude.
Their lasso work was feeble and crude.
He climbed higher on a hill by the barn,
Found a sled, and slid down to the warm!

Sandyanon said...

Well, I guess what I meant was that I don't see any play with the language, just someone thinking, "What if we had an actual one with that named problem!"

But sure, you could call it cute. BTW, I googled around and there doesn't seem to be any consensus as to the origin of that phrase. It may have had something to do with baseball. Or not.

OwenKL said...

Sandy, while today's pun is sort of lame (pun fully intended), it's still better than most, by happenstance, that they've been coming up with recently.

The etymology of the word for a muscle cramp goes back aways.

OwenKL said...

Jinx!

Wilbur Charles said...

Ballgame continued


The situation was familiar to beleaguered Bo-Sox fans
'Will they pull the carrot again?' Went the murmur through the stands
Since the horse drawn days through Charley on the MTA
They'd come so close only to see victory snatched away

But wonder of wonders Billy Mueller snuck a grounder threw
Davy Roberts scampered home and cavorted 'cross the plate
Fans were delirious, they'd tied the game but too soon to celebrate.
But in extra innings, Papi went yard, Redsox win. Who knew?

Somewhere in this splendid land the Sun was shining bright
Somewhere it was snowy. Somewhere crying in the night.
But there in Boston there was hope and new found faith
Victory that had so often eluded us
was ours, not the funeral wraith

WC

Misty said...

"Job Search"

For an entire year,
Charley tried to find a career.
In winter, when it was snowy
he modeled clothes that were showy.
But when told to pose in the nude,
he eluded a job he found crude.
In spring he learned a new sport
and on a tennis court did cavort.
In summer he worked as a plumber
but that job was really a bummer.
In the fall he took a new course
and began training a horse.
But he needed something still higher,
and began to sing in a choir.
And since then, year after year,
he's enjoyed a brilliant career.

Ol' Man Keith said...

To, Owen, Wilbur, & Misty,, our...
"Kings & Queen o' the May!"
(and Sandy too)
The first of May
seems to have bade
our muses out to play.
Each personal
inspirational
genius has had
her poeticizing say.
I can't recall
a day in all
the year so far to date
when we've had such luck
(Lord love a duck!),
in posting such a spate.
~ OMK

Ol' Man Keith said...

Erratum ~
(Maybe this way they'd evade Kismet.)
=
(Maybe they'd evade the Kismet comet.)
~ OMK

Wilbur Charles said...

Cool name, eh Owen. Someone started calling me that in the 70s.

Lots of poetry this morning.

WC

Misty said...

"Great Day"

Poetry doesn't get any better--
no matter what the weather.
Ol' Man Keith, I loved your "Myrtle"
just as much as my Gophie turtle.
Owen, I hope your horse is well fed
if he has to ride down on a sled.
Wilbur, I'm not a baseball fan
but your Bo-Sox I never would ban.
I agree today's poems are items of glory
and our blog has just won a poetic victory.

P.S. My turtle "Gophie" is of the turtle genus "Gopherus agassizii".

Ol' Man Keith said...

Misty ~
Your Gophie is fairly large, according to Google. I guess he is a tortoise rather than a turtle (I always mix them up, and am only now trying to remember which is which).
His scientific name is intriguing. Was he "discovered" by Andre Agassi, the tennis star?
~ OMK

Misty said...

Ol'Man Keith,

You're right, Gophie is fairly large--slightly over a foot in length, I would say, and about half a foot in width? (My sense of measurement is not great).

I looked up the name of her desert species, and here's what I found:
The specific name agassizii is in honor of Swiss-American zoologist Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz. ... The new species name is in honor of the late Professor David Joseph Morafka of California State University, Dominguez Hills, in recognition of his many contributions to the study and conservation of Gopherus.

If you're ever in Laguna Beach some day, you might stop by my place and come have a look at Gophie. But not once the weather gets colder because then she goes into hibernation in a corner of her structure and stays there for months.

By the way, Rowland thought she's a female, not a male, but who knows.