A baby dies, and Humpty cries
The children get little to eat
Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep
And our parents expect us to sleep?

I know that it is not terribly original, but there it is.

Advice
Throughout your life you’ll get bad advice
Like throwing skillets at small brown mice
Or running in streets with speeding cars-
If unwary of life you’ll live with the stars.
I tell you this so you have a chance to survive
You’re not a cat, you don’t have nine lives.

  Of all of  the literary terms that we learn in English Lit,
are any terms so alike, but different, as metaphor and Simile?
Simile, like a true social man, is seen in the company of like, and as.
Metaphor, a business tycoon, chooses to stand alone, behind his desk
Saves money, and time  by dealing directly with the comparison.

Owl

The old man with  large, knowing eyes, unblinking, unwavering.
What dusty tomes, decrepit scrolls has he seen?
Sitting alone at a park, staring across the empty game table
A box of Mahjong tiles at his elbow, a king in his hand.
A treasure chest sitting in the open, waiting to be unlocked.

The owl has long been the symbol for wisdom, going back as far as the greek goddess Athena, goddess of wisdom and war, and probably farther back than that. Owls live for a long time, some owls live up to fifty years. In movies we see the old man sitting in a park at a chess board waiting for someone to strike up a game and a conversation, they almost always have the answer to whatever the problem is. In a sense the two images have come to stand for each other. The theme of this poem is that wisdom is gained with age.

So music does not exist outside of bands?
Only guitar, drum, and bass, can make the sound of song?
Is not the city the heart of jazz?
No? Let me show you.

The heart of the song is thudding feet
As thousands of people walk in the heat,
Their voices rise like the crash of a cymbal.
The sirens sound like the wailing sax,
The street peddlers the high pitched trumpet.
The thudding bass are the trains and trucks
as they go rumbling by.

A hurricane comes, waves crashing down.
The feet that were fluid now stumble and fall.
The sirens wail louder, but the beat it is gone,
and the trains and the trucks fade into silence.
The bars are there but the notes are gone,
My song is left incomplete, I can go to another city
but the melody will not be as sweet.
So I stay and I wait for the first lonely step
that signals the beat to begin.

What is that I hear? Can it be true?
The beat is slow and steady.
A call comes forth! A siren wails!
The song comes back anew,

If you stand on the tallest roof,
The song around you swells,
Not the sound of modern jazz
But the song of life returns.

I am from the woods, the thorns, the bugs.

I am from the fire, the smell of burning cedar.
From the moving vans I hail, going back, back in time.
From the box in the cabinet, the picture on the wall.
I am doctors’ offices, libraries, and several different schools.
I am the trips to the family farm,the fishing ponds, the cows.
I am sweat, and tears, in the pleasure of pain I reside.
I am airplanes, trains, and rocks on which I lie.
A twinkle in my mother's eye.