Sally Murphy from way down under hosts today! Thanks, Sally, wishing you and everyone else a loving Valentine's Day! In her welcoming post, Sally shared her "dental" version of terse verse. Be sure to see her versions. Here's mine.
A Terse Verse Valentine for Anyone in Love
Mush Crush
Speaking of love, according to Pliny the Elder, "Home is where the heart is." Unless you're a black-tailed prairie dog, then it's underground. Or if you're a king cobra, it's in a pile of leaves. White storks find their hearts, uh, homes, on chimney tops. These animal homes and others can be found celebrated poetically in David L. Harrison's new poetry collection, A Place To Start A Family: Poems About Creatures Who Build, illustrated by Giles Laroche.
The diversity of poems that fill the pages parallel the diversity of animals written about, poems that will begin a journey of wonder about other animals' homes and construction prowess. There are four sections—building underground, on land, in the water, and in the air and a bonus poem at the end. Why? Because it is so unique a "home builder" that it doesn't fit in the earlier sections!
I recognized some of these animals, like the star-nosed mole that David describes in part: "I keep my babies/ safe and dry,/ but otherwise/ I don't deny--/I love it wet/and full of bugs, worms, beetles,/ grubs, and slugs." And I know of the yellow garden spiders whose baby spiderlings hatch "the size of dust/sail away on gentle gust/to decorate another yard."