The Dam Has Dugs

Stay, traveller, and rest a while, I beg


To contemplate the mystery of the egg. 

Within this cask of bone resides the sum 

Of all that’s been and all that’s yet to come. 

Linger awhile, that you and I may share
 

Nor fish nor fowl but something passing rare. 

And join my modest muse, extolling thus 

The albino, arctic duck-billed platypus; 

Where once stout Phoebus and his lusty train 

Were rudely routed from the blasted plain 

There, phoenix-like, the platypus arose
 

And gaily sported mid the growling floes 

To rear her brood and serve her mortal span 

In chill crevasses measureless to Man 

Whom Providence has rendered at the last 

Impervious to the Hyperborean blast,
 

The eager whelps, their fragile prison rent 

At once go forth in search of aliment. 

Creation now a further wonder works; 

The dam has dugs. 

The brats wear milky smirks. 

Yet some there be who brave the Arctic squall 

In whom the thirst for knowledge conquers all. 

My pen is still. 

My beating heart unmanned; 

My spirit quails before the hardy band 

That scorns the perils of that dreadful land – 

The ravening beasts which lour on every hand 

The chafing wind that scours the arctic strand 

To bear in triumph homeward by their toils 

This peerless paragon of oval spoils.

Such marvels hath the Modern Ajax wrought, 

Their magnitude the Mind can scarce support. 

Behold! Before our disbelieving eyes
 

The seamless vessel parts - and yields its prize... 

Lou Glandfield 2014