Urbanity the Manatee

I told Anna that if she got me started I'd be stuck making up rhymes about this whenever my brain wasn't otherwise engaged. I gave fair warning. I tried to fight it. No luck.







Urbanity the Manatee

Urbanity the Manatee resides at sixteen thirty-two
On Chestnut Street, near Corbitt Road
In Seymour Trunkwell City Zoo

She lives a quiet sort of life,
This self-contained sophisticate,
And spends her days in perfect calm
A paradigm of etiquette

Each afternoon at half-past one
Attendants draw her drapes aside
And all are granted audience -
To witness grace exemplified

She meets the crowds with mild disdain,
For civil folk, she knows, are few,
And gazes down her nose at them
As manatees are prone to do

Of course, upon her nameplate
Just above “And Kindly do not Touch.”
Is noted, “…Also Sea Cow”
And she resents this very much,

Her chief objective always,
The embodiment of dignity,
Her task, epitomizing
Oceanic aristocracy

For children, who are idiots
(All manatees hold this is true),
Take little heed that never
Has a manatee once deigned to “moo”

But in the face of grave offense
She cedes not her civility
But sniffs, lips-pursed, and swims away
A high-society sea-cow, she